|
[Print-friendly version]
Accessing QUT Blackboard
How do I access QUT Blackboard?
Go to http://blackboard.qut.edu.au and login with your QUT Login.
Can non-QUT people (i.e. people without a QUT-Access username and password) access QUT Blackboard?
QUT Blackboard will only allow access to persons with a valid QUT-Access username and password. Non-QUT people will need to obtain a QUT-Access account before they can access QUT Blackboard; this can be done by applying for an account via the Temporary Access to QUT Resources webpage.
How and when will my students access my unit site in QUT Blackboard?
Students enrolled in Semester 1, 2008 units will be able to access their unit sites through QUT Virtual, from the QUT homepage or at http://blackboard.qut.edu.au. Most Semester 1 unit site enrolments will be available to students from January 15, 2008. They will be automatically enrolled in your unit site and will see a link to it when they first log in.
Note: If your unit site is listed as "(unavailable)" in the My Units module, students enrolled in the site will still not be able to access it. Follow the steps on the Site Access Settings tipsheet to make your unit site available for student use.
How do I arrange access to the unit I'm teaching in QUT Blackboard?
If you are a Unit Coordinator, contact the Authoritative Teaching Data (ATD) representative in your Faculty or School to arrange access to your units; contact the IT Helpdesk if you are unsure of who your Faculty/School ATD representative is. If you are a Lecturer or Tutor, contact your Unit Coordinator.
What should I do if I've been able to access QUT Blackboard before but now I can't?
Check the following things before contacting the IT Helpdesk:
- You are trying to login at this address: http://blackboard.qut.edu.au
- You are using your QUT username and password
- Your password hasn't expired
- Caps Lock is off
Unit Administration
How are unit sites in QUT Blackboard created?
Unit sites are automatically created based on central data sources. There is no need to request the creation of unit sites.
Will there automatically be new versions of Blackboard sites created for every offering of a unit?
Yes, new versions of Blackboard sites will be created for every offering of a unit. The creation of new unit sites will be done as soon as offerings are confirmed in the Callista system.
Are all these new versions of unit sites accessible to staff?
We will shortly be implementing a change to the way unit sites are displayed to students and staff. This change will mean that the current units will be displayed, with an expand/collapse style list of past units.
All previous, current, and future versions are available to staff, with some exceptions. Only staff who are teaching in those units will have full access to the sites.
How are my students enrolled in my units?
Your students will be automatically enrolled in your units based on their enrolment data in QUT Virtual. This data updates every 15 minutes.
For what period do students who have completed a unit retain access to unit sites? Will students who are undertaking supplementary assessment be able to access the unit sites of the units they completed in the previous 2 semesters?
Students will have access to past units for a period of approximately 2 years. This policy is still to be confirmed.
All students will have access to past units, regardless of completion status, including those taking supplementary assessment. They will, however, lose access after graduation along with access to other major QUT systems.
How do I see who has access to my unit site?
Go to Control Panel > List/Modify Users to search for or list all of the staff and students who have access to your unit site.
I'm coordinating two units in parallel: one with an undergraduate student cohort and the other with a postgraduate cohort. Can I combine the material in the unit sites so that students only have to consult one source?
Yes. Please submit a job via the IT Helpdesk with the unit codes for both units, and nominate the unit code that you would like to be the "primary" source for your material. The QUT Blackboard team will then ensure that the students from the "secondary" unit are enrolled in the "primary" unit; this will be a continuous feed, so any changes to enrolments should process on QUT Blackboard automatically.
I'm a Unit Coordinator. How do I give other teaching staff access to my unit?
If the staff member is on the teaching team for the bulk of the duration of the teaching period (i.e. they are not on the teaching team temporarily), it is best to have the staff member added to the Authoritative Teaching Data (ATD) source. The ATD is a centralised database which keeps a record of teaching staff for a unit, and which feeds this data to - in addition to other QUT systems (e.g. Class Allocation System (CAS), LEX) - QUT Blackboard to populate the unit site's administrators list. Contact the IT Helpdesk for information on who your ATD Faculty and/or School representative is.
For temporary additions to the teaching team list, this can be done locally on QUT Blackboard. This is also an optimal approach if you wish the staff member to be added to QUT Blackboard only and not the other systems that ATD feeds data to. Go to Control Panel > Manage Teaching Team. Put the staff member's QUT-Access username into the Username field, choose an administrative role for them to have on the site via the Role drop-down menu, and click Submit. To subsequently change their level of access, change the drop-down menu for Role in the Current Members of the Teaching Team list, then click Submit. Note that only Coordinators can add teaching staff to units.
Why are there more students in my unit in Blackboard than on QUT Virtual?
There are a few possible reasons why this might be the case:
- Blackboard might not be aware that a student has withdrawn from a unit. Please allow around 24 hours for the enrolment data to flow through to Blackboard.
- Blackboard treats unconfirmed enrolments as active enrolments. If the number of students in your unit is the same as the number of ENROLLED plus UNCONFIRMED students on QUT Virtual, everything is normal.
- There might be enrolments being copied in to your units. Unit enrolments can be combined on a single site for any purpose, as outlined in the relevant FAQ above (starting with the text "I'm coordinating two units").
If none of these situations apply to you, then there might be a problem. Please contact the IT Helpdesk to report the issue.
Can I make an offline backup of my unit site?
Yes. Go to the site's Control Panel, then under the Unit Options heading, click either Export Unit or Archive Unit. Once the Export/Archive Manager page appears, you can either click the Export button, from which you can choose which elements of the site you want to create a backup of, or click Archive, which will backup the entire site. Either option will take a little time to generate a .ZIP-formatted file - Blackboard will e-mail you when this process has been completed. When you have received the e-mail, go back to (or Refresh/Reload) the Export/Archive Manager page and you should see that the .ZIP file has appeared. You can then save this to your hard drive or networked drive.
Building Unit Sites (adding content)
How do I start adding content to my unit site?
Navigate to the page in your unit site that you want to add content to. Click on Edit View at the top right of the page. The Content Toolbar will display to allow you to add content to the page
How do I copy content from my previous QUT Blackboard unit site?
If your unit was in QUT Blackboard for a previous semester, it will be empty and ready for you to re-populate with as much or as little of last semester’s content as you wish.
To copy content from a previous unit site, go into the previous site and use the copy button for an individual resource, or go via the Control Panel and use the Unit Copy function (located under Unit Options). You can then select what content you wish to copy across to the new destination. If you don’t have access to that site, you can contact the unit coordinator or the professional staff in that faculty to add you as an administrator.
Is there anything I should keep in mind before I add material to the site?
Yes - be advised of the following:
- Students may not have the correct software to open documents/files that you wish them to download. It is best to advise them (via description text; e.g. the Text field of an Item resource) of which program you have used to open documents/files that you upload (e.g. Adobe Acrobat Reader, Microsoft PowerPoint); the version of the software may also be of assistance here.
- Following from the previous point, advise students of any special software plugins (e.g. Flash) or codecs that may need to be used to view the file.
- If a file is large, students may experience difficulties downloading the file if they are in remote areas and/or have slow Internet connections. See the FAQ below for more information (starting with the text "Is there a file size limit").
Why can't I see some unit materials?
If you cannot see a content item that you are certain you uploaded to your unit site, make sure that the item hasn't been made Unavailable. To check if there are content items which are unavailable:
- View the content in Edit View. Items which are unavailable will have greyed-out icons and display the text Item is not available.
- Click Modify next to the item.
- Select Yes next to Make content available.
- Click Submit.
Content items can also become unavailable if the date and time restrictions were set with a Display Until date which has now passed.
How do I hide some content from students?
You can make individual items or whole folders unavailable to your students. This is useful while you are developing an area as well as to provide an area of the site to store teaching staff-only resources. If you make a folder unavailable to students, all content within it will be unavailable as well. To make an item or folder unavailable to students:
- View the content in Edit View.
- Click Modify next to the item.
- Select No next to Make content available.
- Click Submit
If I modify the properties of my CMD link (under Learning Resources) to set the availability dates – does this relate to the dates I have booked out my resources from the library?
The Course Materials Database (CMD) link is automatically created for every unit site. If you book out resources from the library to allow your students access to them for certain periods of time, then you and your students will be able to use this link to access them. If you don’t require this link, you can make it unavailable or remove it from your site.
Setting the “Display After” and “Display Until” options in the CMD link item in QUT Blackboard, will not affect or update the dates you requested resources be made available from the library. To change the dates of availability of the items in the library’s CMD, you must contact your Faculty Librarian to arrange this.
Example Scenario:
“The Winds of Time” is booked out as reference material by a unit coordinator from July 27th until August 19th. This means that the resource is linked from the CMD for that unit cohort from 27/07/2007 – 19/08/2007.
The unit coordinator then changes the availability dates in their QUT Blackboard site to make the link to the CMD available only from the 2nd August until the 23rd August. This means that the students only get access to the reference material via the QUT Blackboard site from 02/08/2007 – 19/08/2007.
To ensure the students had access to that resource from 02/08/2007 – 12/08/2007, the unit coordinator should request that their reference material be booked out between those times.
Can I create a link from my Blackboard site directly to an item in the Course Materials Database (CMD)?
Yes. From the list of CMD readings for the unit, right-click a link to an item and copy the URL (Copy Shortcut in Internet Explorer). Then create an External Link in your Blackboard site and paste the copied link into the URL field (or use the  button in the text editor to create a link within the text of any item).
Note: the link should look like this: https://qutvirtual.qut.edu.au/portal/pls/portal/cmd_request_p.show_item?p_item_id=12345
The following format is not valid: https://cmd.qut.edu.au//cmd/ABC123/ABC123_BK_56789.pdf
Links of the latter format may work at first, but will break when you next renew the CMD item.
Some CMD items have an additional link to a text-only copy, but such links should not be copied, as they will also break when the item is renewed.
Is there a file size limit for files that I want to upload to Blackboard?
For regular files uploaded via the Item resource, or with a resource which contains an Attach File or Upload File function (e.g. Add Wiki Entry), there is a file size limit of 4,000KB (approximately 4MB) for individual files. This limit can be increased (not waived) on a per-site basis by contacting the IT Helpdesk and registering a) which individual unit/community sites you wish to have the limit increased for, and b) what amount of KB is needed (you will need to determine this by examining the file size(s) of the file(s) that you wish to upload).
For media files (i.e. audio and video files) only, there is no limit if the file is uploaded via the Media File resource. Check the Media Files instructional tipsheet for usage of the Media File tool.
Please note that files larger than 4,000KB can cause problems for students attempting to download via slow connections (e.g. using dial-up modems) and for remotely-located students.
If possible, reduce the size of large non-media files by substituting inserted images with more compressed file types (e.g. .JPGs), or split the text into separate files; it is also possible to split audio/video files into smaller chunks by using specialised editing software, and low-resolution copies of media can be generated for the purposes of lowering file size.
How do I turn the Visual Text Box Editor on/off?
The Visual Text Box Editor allows you to apply formatting to text entered directly into your unit sites. To disable it:
- Click User Settings in the Tools box on the QUT Blackboard Home tab.
- Click Set Visual Text Box Editor Options.
- Select appropriate Set availability option.
- Click Submit, then OK.
Assessment
I have created an assignment item, and now I would like to remove it. How will this affect the Gradebook?
Deleting Assignment resources from a Content Area gets rid of any files that students have submitted to it. There's a warning message before that appears if you attempt to delete this item.
If you would like to make the Assignment item unavailable for students, but keep all the submissions to date, change the availability through the “Modify” page. This will make the item invisible to students, but still available to you through edit view and in the Gradebook.
Can the grades collected in my unit site’s Gradebook be exported into Curwen?
There is no direct way to export from QUT Blackboard to Curwen. This is because Curwen is being replaced in 2008. We are working with the project developing the new system (SAMS).
The only way of moving the data across from QUT Blackboard is by exporting the results as a spreadsheet and adding them into Curwen manually. This is done via Gradebook > Download Grades.
I would like to download all my submitted assignments in bulk – how do I do this?
Gradebook includes the ability for Assignment submissions to be downloaded on bulk into a compressed .ZIP file for offline review. For instructions on how to do this, please see the Gradebook Basics tipsheet, under Grading Assignments.
Communication
How do I send email to all students enrolled in my unit?
Go to Control Panel > Send Email (under Student Tools). From here you can send email to all users in your unit or select specific groups of students to send email to.
How do I post an Announcement in my unit site?
Go to Control Panel > Announcements (under Student Tools) and click Add Announcement. Announcements you add here will be displayed on the front page of your Unit as well as in your students' My Announcements box on their QUT Blackboard Home tab.
How do I set up a discussion board for my students?
Go to Collaboration > Discussion Board and click + Forum.
|
