Set Up Courses

Course roles control users' access to the content and tools within a course. Each user is assigned a role for every course they participate in. For example, a user with a Teaching Assistant role in one course can have a Student role in another course.

• Instructor: Role provides access to all areas of the course including the control panel for posting content, making users available/unavailable, posting grades, and making the course available/unavailable. This role is generally assigned to the person developing, teaching, or facilitating the class and is automatically populated from Campus Connection.

• Teaching Assistant: Role provides access to everything included with the instructor role, except changing a user's availability.

• Facilitator: Role provides access to course materials and instructional tools to support course delivery. Facilitators can work with content, the gradebook, calendar, announcements, discussions, and groups to assist instructors in managing the course.

• Course Builder: Role has access to most areas of the course. This role is appropriate for an assistant who shouldn't have access to student grades. If the course is unavailable to students, a course builder can still access the course.

• Grader: Role has limited access to the course. Graders can assist an instructor in the creation, management, delivery, and grading of assessments and surveys. The grader may also assist an instructor with adding manual entries. If a course is unavailable to students, the course appears in the course list for a user with the role of Grader.

• Student: this is the default course user role. A user with the role of Student can submit coursework and participate in discussions. Students can't create or grade course items. This role is automatically populated from Campus Connection.

• Guest: Role provides limited access to specific areas of a course designated by the instructor. Guests are unable to view student interactions, submit coursework, or participate in discussions. Note: Instructors can assign users to a Guest role, but these users can't access courses in BB Ultra at this time. 

Course Settings allows you to customize courses to suit you and your student's needs. Course Settings will appear in the top, right-hand corner of an Ultra course— if the user has privileges to view or manage settings.

Course Settings

Settings that can be found in Course Settings include:

Manage Course Duration

Course Duration defines the time in which students may access and interact with a course. Some courses remain available at all times; other have a restricted date range, only allowing student to access them for a limited time. The default setting for UND courses is Ongoing (no restrictions to access).

Manage Course Tools

You can manage various tools using Course Settings, including the Roster tool and Message tool.

• The Roster tool allows the instructor to determine if students can view the course roster. This feature is turned on by default.

• The Messages tool allows the instructor to determine if they would like the option for students to use the messaging feature for communication with other students and/or the instructor in the course. When turned off, messages will be sent via email only.

Manage Virtual Classroom

Instructors have the option to turn on access to Class Collaborate. By default, the option is turned off in all Ultra courses.

Instructors may choose which notifications they wish to receive from the Notification Settings Panel in the Activity Stream. 

Activity stream

Choose which activities appear on your Stream page.

• Email: If you want to receive email notifications, you will need to add an email address to your profile page. Then, choose how often and which activities you want to receive notifications for.

• Push notifications: If you want to receive push notifications, choose how often and which activities you want to receive notifications for. Messages will pop up on your mobile device if you have the Blackboard App installed.

Instructors and administrators can upload a single image to serve as both the course thumbnail in Base Navigation and the internal course banner in Ultra courses.

Benefits of a Course Banner

• Improves the appearance of an Ultra Course View landing page
• Improves student engagement and experience
• Brings consistency between what the Base Navigation displays and the actual course
• Helps students to differentiate between courses, and locate course details
• Makes it easier for  students to identify course faculty members and class meeting days, times, and locations

The Unsplash image library has been added to Blackboard Ultra. You can search their vast library of royalty-free images to use for your Course Banner as well as your Learning Modules.

Global Calendar

Use the global calendar to manage due dates, meetings, and course events across all your courses in one place. 

• Office hours, course schedule, and events: These appointments appear automatically on the calendar when you add them to a course.

• Due dates: When you create content with a due date, it appears automatically in the calendar.

Check your Course Calendar

When you access the calendar from inside a course, it only shows events for that course. The course view of the calendar displays due dates, the course schedule, office hours, and course-specific meetings and events. When you create content with a due date, it appears automatically in the calendar.

All events you create within a specific course roll into the global calendar. You can switch over to the big picture by accessing your global calendar from the list where your name appears.

Use the Courses page to access past, current, and future courses. Here, you can filter and sort courses to make viewing easier.  

Course shells are automatically created in Blackboard for all classes that exists in Campus Connection approximately 110 days prior to the start date of the course. Sometimes a Blackboard course is created before an instructor has been assigned to teach the class or the instructor of record changes before the start of the semester. Updates to Campus Connection flow to Blackboard within 24 hours of the change. If you don’t see your course in Blackboard, here are some steps you can take to investigate:

1. If you do not see the class you are teaching in Campus Connection, we recommend contacting your department office. They can start the process to update Campus Connection. Once information in Campus Connection has been changed, Blackboard will automatically be updated within 24 hours.

2. If you see the class in Campus Connection but do not see it in Blackboard, you can check your course list settings to see if it was hidden from view. Put your cursor on the My Courses header bar and click the gear icon on the right. Locate the row for the course that you would like to reveal, and click the check box under Select All. This should restore the view of a previously hidden course. Click Submit to save any changes.

If you need assistance finding a course site in Blackboard, please contact UND Tech Support at 701-777-2222.

All teaching assistant (TA) and graduate teaching assistant (GTA) requests will now be added to Campus Connection for automated population into Blackboard Ultra. This process will be the same as adding an instructor to a Blackboard course.

Process

When a TA/GTA or additional instructor needs to be added to a Blackboard course, instructors will need to inform their department Scheduling Assistant of this addition. The Scheduling Assistant will then email Laura Vatnsdal in the Office of the Registrar to add them in Campus Connection. The Scheduling Assistant will then add the TA/GTA to the specific course in CLSS. This information automatically populates in Blackboard within 24 hours.

You will need to provide the following information to your Scheduling Assistant:

• Name

• EMPL ID#

• Course(s) taught and class numbers (i.e., MATH 103 #8018)

• Will this new add be a Primary Instructor or a Teaching Assistant?

A course must be made available before enrolled students can view or access its content. However, you may want to make a course unavailable during the building process or after a scheduled course has finished.

Making a course available or unavailable depends on your course role. Blackboard administrators, instructors, course builders, teaching assistants, and graders can see and access unavailable courses from their Courses menu and the course list, but they're marked as Private. 

Manage course access in Course Settings.

Design online courses with confidence! With student preview, you can review course content from a student's perspective. You can also validate course behaviors. For example, you can review the conditional release of content and how grades appear.

While in student preview, you can do the following: 

• Submit assignments
• Take tests
• Download and upload files
• Participate in conversations
• Participate in discussions and journals
• Send course messages
• View grades as a student
• Experience group membership

Enable Progress Tracking to give students an easy way to keep track of what they have done inside each course. If you wait to enable progress tracking until after the start of the term, participatory items will be retroactively marked as complete. For example, assessments submitted previously by students will be marked as complete. Non-participatory items, like Ultra documents, will still need to be manually marked by students.

You can enable progress tracking at any time during a term.

Adopt a textbook with Follett Discover! This tool streamlines the adoption process for faculty as well as helps students obtain, organize, and instantly access their required and recommended course materials—all from within Blackboard.

When choosing a digital textbook, faculty must adhere to the following terms to ensure that textbook content is accessible for all students:

• Vet textbook accessibility before adoption.

• Maintain syllabi, handouts, and other instructional materials in an electronic text format.

• Provide Student Disability Resources with a list of required reading material, course syllabus, and handouts when requested.

• Provide Student Disability Resources with any additional instructional material assigned throughout the semester.

• Consult with Student Disability Resources when appropriate.

For additional information about digital textbook accessibility, please see the Student Disability Resources Accommodations webpage.

Get Assistance with Follett Discover

Many departments have a Follett Discover Concierge to assist faculty in adding textbooks and course materials into Follett Discover. Faculty should check with their department first to see if this assistance is available.