BlackBoard Question of the Week

Q. Is there a good way to print a monthly calendar?

A. Unfortunately, there’s not a good option to print a calendar from Blackboard. But one way to do this is to open the calendar, then do a screen print:

1. Open the calendar in Blackboard.
2. On the upper right-hand side of your keyboard, press Print Screen or PrtScn.
3. Open a Word document and select Paste, or use Ctrl-V. 
4. Double-click on the image in Word, then use the crop button on the upper right side of the format tab.
5. When you crop the image, you can remove the blackboard course menu and header, so you only have the calendar.  You can also resize to make the calendar bigger. 

Q. Can you tell me if all of my courses will remain listed in Blackboard until I graduate?  I took a class in the summer of 2011 and now it is not listed there.

A. Courses from a previous semester are typically removed around the middle of the following semester; however an instructor may manually make the course unavailable sooner than that.  Students will be removed from Fall 2011 term courses on March 4, 2012, three days after the last day to submit assignments to change an “I” grade to a letter grade.  If you would like access to a course that is no longer available, you will need to contact the instructor.

For future reference, the date when students are automatically removed from the previous term’s classes is posted under the “Students” heading on the Blackboard Important Dates webpage.

Q. Is there a way to grade assignments anonymously in Blackboard? 

A. You can do this in Blackboard if you use the Assignment Tool to create the assignment. For anonymous grading, each student is assigned a number, such as Student 8, and attempts appear in random order.

Follow these steps to use anonymous grading:

1. In the control panel, under Grade Center, click on Full Grade Center.
2. Click the chevron beside the name of the assignment and select Grade Anonymously.
3. On the Grade Assignment page, grade the first student’s submission, then move to the next student using the Save and Next button in the upper right corner of the window.
4. After you grade the last student’s submission, click the Save and Exit button in the upper right corner.

If you choose Save and Exit before you are finished grading all of your students, when you return to complete grading anonymously, the remainder of the students in the class will have been assigned  new random numbers.

Q. Students are saying they can’t see my recorded lectures in Adobe Connect in Blackboard, even though I can see them. How do I fix this?

A. If you want your students to be able to enter the meeting space you are using to record, and have access to the recordings in the Adobe Connect area on Blackboard, you should add them all to that meeting space; you can do that by clicking the chevron to the right of the meeting name, selecting Edit, and then adding the students. You can find detailed instructions for this at Adobe Connect in Blackboard: Creating a Meeting.

To access recordings, students should:

1. Click on Tools in the Course Menu.
2. Click on Adobe Connect Pro.
3. Click on the chevron beside the name of the meeting and select Meeting Information.
4. Click on the active link Recordings.

NOTE: If students click on the name of the meeting itself instead of on the chevron, they will get a notice that the meeting cannot begin until the host  arrives; but there is no need for the instructor to be logged in for students to listen to the recordings.

If you don’t intend for students to use the meeting space, and you only want them to access the recorded lectures, you can make your recorded lectures public in Connect Central (http://connect.luc.edu) and then put the links to the lectures in Blackboard; you can find instructions for making your recordings public at Recording a Meeting.

Q. Previously, when I would click on a course, it would bring me to a page of that course with multiple tabs on the left hand side, such as Assignments, Content, Communication, Discussion Board. Now I’m not seeing any of those, so I can’t see any of my materials for any of my courses.

A. It sounds like you have accidentally hidden your course menu from view. To get it back, log into Blackboard and go to one of your courses. Then, follow the instructions at Recover Missing Course Menu.