(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)
The basic structure of any learning management system relies on the basic course, or course shell. A course shell holds all the information and communication that goes on within our course and is the central location for all activities between students and instructors.
Let’s think about our course shell as a virtual house or apartment. A house or apartment is made up of different rooms where we put things that we use in our everyday life. These rooms such as the living room, kitchen, or bedrooms can be compared to content areas within our course shell. Within each of these content areas, there are items such as telephones, dishwashers, computers, or televisions that we use to interact, communicate, or complete tasks. These items would be called course tools within the course shell. These content areas and tools are available within our course shells and we can use them in the same ways. While as administrators, we won’t take a deep dive into all these tools; we should know that they are available and instructors use them within their courses.
Blackboard Learn offers many different ways to create courses, but to help simplify our discussion, we will classify those ways in two categories, basic and advanced. This article will discuss the course creation options that we classify as basic.
When we get ready to create a course in Blackboard Learn, the system requires a few items. It requires a course name and a course ID. The first one should be self-explanatory. If you are teaching a course on “Underwater Basket Weaving” (a hobby I highly recommend), you would simply place this information into the course name. Now the course ID is a bit trickier. Think of it like a barcode that you can find on your favorite cereal. That barcode is unique and tells the checkout scanner the item you have purchased. The course ID has a similar function in Blackboard Learn. It must be unique; so if you plan to have multiple courses on “Underwater Basket Weaving”, you will need to figure out a way to express the differences in each course ID.
We just talked about how each course ID in Blackboard has to be unique. We as administrators will find that most Blackboard Learn instances we deal with have numerous course shells. Providing multiple courses to the users might become difficult. So we should consider creating a course ID naming convention if one isn’t already in place. Our conversation will not tell you which naming convention will be best for your organization, but here are some helpful tips for us to start with:
Many organizations use a student information system, (SIS), which manages the enrollment process.
The first item in our Course Settings area allows us to set up several of the default access options within our courses. The Default Course Properties page covers when and who has access to a course by default.
Pitfalls of setting start and end dates
When using the Start and End dates to control course duration, we may find that all users enrolled within the course will lose access.
If we are using the Blackboard 2012 theme, we have the ability to enable course themes within our Blackboard instance. These themes are created by Blackboard and can be applied to an instructor’s course by clicking on the theme icon, seen in the following screenshot, in the upper-right corner of the content area while in a course. They have a wide variety of options, but currently administrators cannot create custom course themes.
We can also select which icon sets courses will use by default in our Blackboard instance. These icon themes are created by Blackboard and will appear beside different content items and tools within the course. In the following screenshot, we can see some of the icons that make up one of the sets. Unlike the course themes, these icons will be enforced across the entire instance.
The Course Tools area offers us the ability to set what tools and content items are available within courses by default. We can also control these settings along with organizations and system tools by clicking on the Tools link under the Tools and Utilities module. Let’s review what tools are available and how to enable and disable them within our courses.
The options we use to set course tools are exactly same as those used in the Tools area we just mentioned. Use the information provided here to set tool availability with a page.
Let’s take a more detailed look into the default availability setting within this page. We have four options for each tool. Every tool has the same options.
Once we make the changes, we must click on the Submit button.
The Quick Setup Guide page was introduced into Blackboard 9.1 Service Pack 8. As seen in the following screenshot, it offers instructors the basic introduction into the course if they have never used Blackboard before. Most of the links are to the content from the On Demand area of the Blackboard website. We as administrators can disable this from appearing when an instructor enters the course. If we leave the guide enabled, we can add custom text to the guide, which can help educate instructors about changes, help, and support available from our organization.
We can continue to customize default look and feel of our course shells with images in the course entry point and at the top of the menu. We might use these images to spotlight that our organization has been honored with an award. Here we find an example of how these images would look.
Two images can be located at the bottom of the course entry page, which is the page we see after entering a course. Another image can be located at the top of the course menu. This area also allows us to make these images linkable to a website. Here’s an example.
We can also create a default course size limit for the course and the course export and archive packages within this area. Course Size Limits allows administrators to control storage space, which may be limited in some instances. When a course size limit is within 10 percent of being reached, the administrator and instructor get an e-mail notification. This notification is triggered by the disk usage task that runs once a day. After getting the notification, the instructor can remove content from the course, or the administrator can increase the course quota for that specific course.
This area allows us to set default controls over the Grade History portion of the Grade Center. Grade history is exactly what it says. It keeps a history of the changes within the Grade Center. Most administrators recommend having grade history enabled by default because of the historical benefits. There may be a discussion within your organization to permit instructors to disable this feature within their course or clear the history altogether.
The course menu offers the main navigation for any course user. Our organization can create a default course menu layout for all new course shells created based on the input from instructional designers and pedagogical experts. As seen in the following screenshot, we simply edit the default menu that appears on this page.
As administrators, we should pay close attention when creating a default course menu. Any additions or removals to the default menu are automatically changed without clicking on the Submit or Cancel buttons, and are applied to any courses created from that point forward.
Blackboard recently introduced course structures. If enabled, these pre-built course menus are available to the instructor within their course’s control panel. The course structures fall into a number of different course instruction scenarios. An example of the course structure selection interface is shown in the following screenshot:
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