Blackboard new user

An Introduction to using Blackboard

Blackboard facilitates the presentation and organisation of material into courses for delivery via the www. You will have been enrolled in particular courses and will see those courses as available when you enter the system. In addition to delivering material it also enables announcements to be made to the members of a course and provides an entry point for emailing between individuals and groups within a course.

This document provides a very basic introduction to entering the system and its use. Contents links to the relevant section and there are also cross reference links within the document to facilitate explanation of interdependent points. This document is not meant to be at all comprehensive. It covers the most important aspects allowing you to get in and be able to use Blackboard. You will find that a number of the entries on the contents list match the course navigation buttons in Blackboard. If you are unable to find what you want in the Contents try searching the text by using Edit->Find from the browser menu.

Quick Start: Look at Logging In and Opening a course

CONTENTS:

Announcements - Information posted for members of a course. Messages posted for all users of the system.
Blackboard - Logging in with your user name and seeing the site.
Course Documents - The main course teaching material. Links to sites that are considered relevant.
Communication - Entry to the email option from within a course
Course Information - Non-Teaching material, Aims of the course, Timetables, Exam past papers.
Course Map - Direct access to course sections. Course navigation.
Email - Emailing to other course members.External Links - Links to other sites on the www that contain detail relevant to the course.
Finding Course Material -within a course, Information, Teaching material, Links to web sites, Getting around your course.
Help Manual - Blackboard student user help manual.
Log on to Blackboard - Logging in with a user name and password, Connecting to Blackboard, Setting a new password.
Navigation - within a course, Information, Teaching material, Links to web sites, Getting around your course.
Opening a Course - Getting at the material in your courses.
Opening Page - The initial page that you are presented with when loged in.
PDF Documents - What they are and how to read them.
Personal Information - Your own details. Changing your password.
RTF Documents - What they are and how to make them.
Staff Information - The teachers attached to the course and how to contact them.
Tool Box - Set of icons that give entry to things like Personal details and Email.

Getting to Blackboard: Entry to Blackboard at The SoP site is reached with the link: http://blackboard.pharmacy.ac.uk/ This link should open a new browser window on your PC enabling you to read this document while "Logging On". Adjust the two windows so both can be open together. The text in this window will wrap as necessary. Click on the "Login" button and you will be presented with a form containing two text boxes. Enter the user name and the password you have been given and you will be presented with the Opening Page. If this is the first time that you are logging in change your password to something else see - Changing Passwords.
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The Opening Page: The first page that you see at login is the School of Pharmacy page. There is a tags at the top that will switch between School of Pharmacy pages and Course lists.
School of Pharmacy shows any system wide messages, any messages that relate to courses that you are part of the list of courses and the general tool box. Return to this page at any time by selecting the School of Pharmacy tag at the top. You can customize the view of your School of Pharmacy page using the contents and layout buttons. The page is a general view of the information. You can see any announcements posted for your courses, see tasks or events set or open a course from the MyCourses section
Courses shows an expanded list of courses that you are part of and the instructors that are teaching on that course.
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Announcements: These are messages that can be sent by instructors to all members of a course and will be evident at login time. Previous messages are kept and can be reviewed.
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Tool Box: Tool icons are collected in a box on the School of Pharmacy page these overlap with some of the same tools that are accessed through the Tools navigation button when you have a course selected.
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Personal Information: While you have no course selected you have a Tools Box on the left of the screen. If you do not see this box click on the School of Pharmacy Tag at the top. At the end of the tools list is a Personal Information Icon. Clicking this gives you access to information about your self. There are four categories. You should find your name and email address in Personal Information. You can change you password in Edit Password. The first time that you enter use this form to set your password to something private - do not give it to others. The personal details that you add in this section can be made public or kept private as you specify.
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Changing Password: Go to Personal Information from the Tool Box or through the Tools navigation button. Select Change Password. make the entry and a second to check that it was correct. Submit and confirm OK. It is now changed and will be active next time that you login.
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Opening a Course: The right side of the opening screen has a section headed My Courses. This will show any courses on which you are enrolled. Clicking on a link beside the open book icon will enter that course and the page will change. see Navigation.
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Navigation: After selecting a course you will see a set of large navigation buttons down the left side replacing the tools box. Use these buttons to move arround to sections of the course. The important ones to start with are Course Information and Course Documents. You can find entries for some of the others in the contents.
The course map is a quick way of getting to any part of the course. The map entry button is found at the bottom of the list of navigation buttons. Opening it gives a view that is similar to a disk dive directory structure. A jump can be made directly to a folders or item if you already know where you want to go.
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Course Information: This navigation button takes you to the entry point of the Information pages. Here you will find documents such as the aims of the course, timetable information and other non teaching course material.
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Course Documents: The Course Documents button gets you to the main body of information that constitutes the teaching material of the course. The initial entry page will probably contain folders each holding material pertaining to subdivisions of the course such as course modules (B1, B2 etc). These folders will then have either more folders, documents or links to other web locations. Most documents will be in PDF format and can be read or downloaded. Acrobat reader will be needed to view these documents. Use the PDF link for more information.
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Staff Information: Here you will find a list of instructors on the course with some information about their responsibilities and contact details.
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External Links: External links are links to other web sites with material that has been considered relevant to the course in general. Embedded within the Course Documents in module sections there will possibly be links to sites with information that is specific to one module only.
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Email: Emails can be sent to members of the course or to subgroups of the course. Email option can be selected from the Tools box or Send Email via the Communication button from within a course. Select the person or group to whom to wish to send. Do not abuse this function with irrelevant emailing or you could upset a lot of people at once!
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User Manual: For those who would like to know more Blackboard has a users manual help document. This can be found as a menu entry: User Manual - through the Tools navigation button when any course is selected.
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PDF: Portable Document Format. This file format has been developed to allow publication of text and graphics in a common format. PDF files are read using Adobe Acrobat. Acrobat is a free program than can be downloaded from the Adobe Acrobat download site. Version 8 is the current version of the reader. The program is usually to be found already loaded on most machines that have been used for reading documents from the www.
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RTF: Rich Text Format. This file format has been developed to allow publication of text and graphics in a common format. A further advantage is that because it only contains text or images and no executable code it cannot not contain virus code.

To save a document as RTF. From your word processor main menu use the File menu -> Save As and select Rich Text Format (*.rtf). Enter a file name and it will be saved with an rtf extension. This may be then be read by a variety of word processing programmes abd other applications.
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Link to Blackboard Site

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