Blackboard Course Requests for Summer, Fall

Instructors who use Blackboard should start preparing for their summer and fall classes by contacting the Faculty Center for Learning Development (FCLD) with their course requests.

Instructors who need Summer Blackboard courses ready for the beginning of the summer term (May 18) should try to submit course requests to FCLD by Wednesday, May 4.

For Fall courses, it would be helpful if instructors submit their fall course requests before leaving for the summer. Instructors should be sure they submit the correct CRN for course requests, as the CRN is the basis for student enrollments.

Course requests (for summer or fall) should be submitted using the online Course Request Form at http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/fcld/blackboardcourserequest.htm.

Be sure to include the following in the request:

• A list of any new Blackboard course sites to be created for summer or fall.
• A list of the Blackboard course sites to be reused for summer or fall.
• The CRN for the term you will be teaching the courses.

Spring Cleaning
Instructors should please notify FCLD by e-mail if they have additional Blackboard course sites they want removed from their course lists. FCLD maintains backups so courses can always be brought back should they be needed. FCLD’s goal is for instructors to have access to one full set of all their Blackboard courses, but eliminate duplicate sites and old course sites that are no longer used by instructors.

Two weeks after the term ends (May 25, 2005), FCLD will back up all spring courses for safekeeping and make them unavailable to students. By making the courses unavailable, students logging in next fall will not be confused when they still see “old” (spring) courses. Faculty will still be able to access them. If there is a reason for keeping them available to students past this date (e.g., a student with an incomplete or a continuing online discussion), please let FCLD know.

Blackboard grades and discussion posts are not preserved when archiving or copying courses, so please remember to print out discussions and download any grades you have recorded in Blackboard’s Online Gradebook prior to the end of the term. (See instructions below.)


Instructions for Printing Blackboard Discussions

• Enter the course, and then enter the discussion board you wish to print.
• Click on Show Options to reveal the Options Menu.
• Click on the Select All button in the Options Menu.
• Click on Collect and all the messages will be collected in a scrolling fashion.
• Select Print in your browser to print the messages.

Instructions for Printing Out the Online Gradebook
From the Control Panel of the course, click on Gradebook, then Download Grades.

• To save the file to a PC, right-click on Download, and select 'Save link as …' (Netscape) or 'Save target as …' (Internet Explorer). To save it to a Macintosh, click and hold down the mouse button on 'Save Exported Gradebook', and select 'Save this link as …' (Netscape) or 'Save target as …' (Internet Explorer). Note that for Netscape 6 on the Macintosh, the menu will only appear if you hold the control key down while clicking on the link.



• Choose the directory in which to save the file.



• After saving the file, open Microsoft Excel or a similar program, and go to the File menu. Select Open. On a Macintosh, this may be the only way to open the file, as the system may not automatically associate the saved file with Excel.



• Locate the directory where the file is saved and double-click the filename (the file is named gradebook.csv by default.)

FCLD staff is available to answer any questions about these procedures or any other Blackboard questions. Please contact them by phone at 860.768.4661 or by e-mail at fcld@hartford.edu.