Blackboard at GTU: Information and Help for Instructors
Go to the GTU Blackboard site
Get Help
Blackboard Usernames and Passwords
Your Blackboard username and password is the same as your WebAdvisor username and password.
- If you do not know your WebAdvisor username and password, please see the registrar of your school.
- If you are an instructor who is also a student, and you already have a username and password as a student, then you do not need a second username and password.
- Information to Give to Students in Your Class
- Are you having to enter your username and password twice before you can enter Blackboard? Be sure to bookmark the Blackboard home page, http://blackboard.gtu.edu and NOT the login page (http://blackboard.gtu.edu/webapps/login). Starting from the login page instead of the actual home page will cause this problem.
Blackboard Course Sites
Blackboard course sites are automatically created for every class before the start of each semester.
Creating Content for Course Sites
Course Content
Managing Students and Small Groups
More Help
- Go to the course Control Panel to view the Blackboard online manual. The link is near the bottom of the right half of the Control Panel.
What can I do with Blackboard?
This section presents some ideas for using Blackboard. These are just examples of ways that Blackboard can help you improve the quality of learning for your students.
- Post announcements. Keep your students up-to-date by posting announcements on Blackboard. Announce changes of class venue or last-minute additions to assignments, and avoid the "no one told me" syndrome.
- List links to web sites. Post live links to web sites that supplement other reading.
- Eliminate photocopying hassles. Hate photocopying? Post handouts and assignments on Blackboard and instruct students to print them out and bring them to class. Note: please be aware that repeated posting of copyrighted material may be a violation of copyright law.
- Write down assignments. Even graduate students misplace that piece of paper that had the assignment written on it, but by posting it on Blackboard, it is always available. When the student comes to the library, the librarian can get a better idea of what the student needs from reading your assignment, as you wrote it, than s/he can from the student's verbal description of it.
- Encourage discussion outside of class time. Set students up in small group discussion lists, and encourage them to critique each other's research papers before they turn them in to you. Sharing works-in-progress rather than simply turning in a final product also can discourage plagiarism. You don't have to participate in all of these discussions yourself -- assign students to monitor them.
- Extend learning. Wish you could teach them a little more, but don't have enough class time? Extend their learning by having discussions forums (assign students to moderate them, so you don't have to do it all yourself). Or, create a simple presentation with PowerPoint, upload it onto your course site, and assign students to view it between class meetings.
- Survey or test your class at the beginning to assess their level of understanding of the topic. Blackboard enables you to create a survey or test that can gather that information easily for you.
- Post recordings of your lecture or of other content. This can be especially helpful for students who are not native English speakers.
- Take "virtual field trips" by sending students to web sites that contain videos, photos, and online tours.
- Date and timestamp when assignments are received. Have students turn in assignments to you using the digital drop box feature. The digital drop box puts a time stamp when assignments are received, and assignments are all stored on Blackboard. Keep your own email free of clutter!
Would you like to see a demonstration course? Logon to Blackboard and search in the course catalog for the demo course, "04FAlibref: The GTU Library."
Last updated February 1, 2007
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