Help for Staff
If you have a Blackboard problem and cannot find the answer on this site, there are a few places to go for additional assistance.
- Make sure that you've attended the appropriate amount of ITS Training first. You should attend the 3-hour hands-on course and consider attending other training, such as preparing electronic documents, if you need to.
- Ring or email the ITS Helpdesk (extn 8888/03 479 8888/0800 479 8888 (NZ only), email helpdesk@otago.ac.nz). They will be able to provide students and staff with technical assistance, or direct you to where you can find the information you require.
- If you are new to Blackboard, click here to view a checklist of steps required to build your Blackboard paper.
- Download the Blackboard Instructors Manual.
- If you have questions about online teaching, and would like more information, you can contact HEDC:
- HEDC provides advice and assistance to staff or departments intending to add flexible teaching approaches to their courses for both on and off campus students. For further information, please telephone Ext 8492 or e-mail: hedc@otago.ac.nz.
- HEDC also has a collection of resources that staff members may borrow relating to all aspects of teaching and learning.
Help Topics
Key:
Help topic contains PDF resources
Help topic contains video resources
| Accessibility | |
Information for users with disabilities; JAWS problems; off campus access; contact details. |
| Adaptive Release | |
Make content available to students, based on specific criteria. |
| Administration of Bb Papers | |
How your paper is managed year to year. |
| Announcements | Announcements are displayed on the front page of your site. | |
| Anti-plagiarism: Information for staff | Information for University staff about our anti-plagiarism software. | |
| Anti-plagiarism: Instructions | How to use the anti-plagiarism tool in Blackboard. | |
| Anti-plagiarism: Frequently Asked Questions | Frequently asked questions. | |
| Anti-plagiarism: Service Updates | Service updates from Blackboard.com | |
| Assignments | |
An Assignment is a file submitted by students (e.g. an essay/report) via Blackboard. |
| Banner and Menu design | Banners and colour schemes distinguish your paper from others. | |
| Bulk loading files | A method for uploading a large number of documents at once. | |
| Colour Picker | Hexadecimal codes for the colours in the colour picker. | |
| Computer requirements | Hardware and software required to use Blackboard. | |
| Course menu | |
Items in the course menu can be extensively modified. |
| Discussion Board | |
A manual explaining how to use the Discussion Board; how to save messages during rollover. |
| Display Problems in IE8 | What to do if you have problems using Internet Explorer 8. | |
| Early warning system | |
Identifying and contacting students who may be falling behind. |
| Equation editor | How to enable the Equation Editor button on a Mac | |
| Example Pages | Some exampes of how you can organise and customise your Blackboard pages. | |
| Field lengths | |
How many characters you can use in various Blackboard text areas. |
| Files | |
Tips for downloading files from Blackboard. |
| Glossary | Create, upload or download a list of terms and definitions for your students. | |
| Grade Center | |
How to enter non-Blackboard grades; how to import and download grades; full grade center manual; how to add a Check my grade link for students. Grade Center replaces the old Grade Book. |
| Groups | How to create a group and add users. | |
| Instructor's Manual | |
A downloadable PDF manual for teaching staff. |
| Internet Explorer 7 Issues | What to do if you have problems using Internet Explorer 7, particularly in the Grade Centre. | |
| Internet Explorer 8 Issues | What to do if you have problems using Internet Explorer 8. | |
| Items and Folders | Items and folders are the basic types of content in Blackboard. | |
| Known Issues | Known issues with Blackboard at Otago. | |
| Language Pack | Changing the language of your paper to French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese or Japanese. | |
| Learning Units | Learning units display information sequentially. | |
| Links | Course links to act as shortcuts; external links to websites can be added to almost any area in your Blackboard site | |
| Login | How to login; common problems. | |
| Moving and Copying content | You can move and copy content within and between papers. | |
| Paper roles | An explanation of the Instructor, TA, Builder and Grader staff roles. | |
| Passwords | What to do if you've lost or want to change your password. | |
| Performance Dashboard | Information about a students' Review Status progress, grades, and Adaptive Release item availability. | |
| Podcasting | How to insert links to a Podcasting site in a Blackboard paper. | |
| PowerPoint | |
How to avoid PowerPoint and PowerPoint derivatives printing problems in the labs; resizing images found in PowerPoint. |
| Quick Edit | How to switch easily between Edit view and the Student View. | |
| Quick Tool linking | Add a link to the Glossary, a specific Discussion forum, or any other Tool to a content area. | |
| Review Status | Enabling this tool will allow students to indicate which content they have reviewed. | |
| Self and Peer assessment | |
enabling students to assess their own or others' work. |
| Spell Checker | Check your spelling in a Blackboard text box, but Blackboard can only check spelling in US English. | |
| Staff Profiles | Information about staff members in your paper. | |
| Statistics | Usage stats about your Blackboard site. | |
| Streaming movies | How to add QuickTime (.mov) and Windows Media (.wma, .wmv) movies streamed from the O.U Streaming Server. | |
| Syllabus | Use the Syllabus template to add information about your paper. | |
| Tests and Surveys | |
How to create a test/survey (aka Quizzes); how to deploy one(make it visible to students); how to download student responses to multi-choice or true/false questions. |
| Virtual Classroom and Chat | |
Live interaction between staff and students. |
| Websites | |
How to zip and upload a website to your Blackboard site. |
| WYSIWYG Editor | Toolbar similar to Word; enabling and disabling this tool. |