Adding Course Materials
Adding Course Materials: Basic Structure
Before adding course materials, it is a sound idea to "storyboard" or layout your course on paper. By determining ahead how you want to organize and structure the course, you will save hours of moving documents around inside the Blackboard structure. Course structure will vary according to discipline and professor preference.
Control Panel: To make changes or to add documents or text to your course, click the 
button below the course navigation buttons on the left of your course.
Content Areas: Though you might not use all of the Content Areas, they will appear in your Control Panel. Renamed tabs generally appear with their new name in the Content Area. Click on the underlined content section to add or modify text. Faculty frequently use the various Content Areas as follows:
- Course Information--syllabus, forms and other documentation that students will refer to repeatedly throughout the semester.
- Course Documents--course structure: units, objectives, lectures, etc.
- Assignments--quizzes, exams and work to be completed, generally divided by unit or week. This could also be included in the course structure.
- Books-- list of print resources.
- External Links--web resources
- Note: Buttons can be modified or removed. See Customizing Blackboard.
Decide which category fits the content you are adding:
- Items are individual, stand-alone files.
- Folders are useful when there are several documents to be added dealing with one topic.
- URLs link to specific web resources directly from a Content Area.
- Course link connects to content in another part of the same course.
- Test adds assessments created in Blackboard directly to the Content Area where it will be used. See Assessments > Tests & Quizzes for more information about creating and delivering tests in Blackboard.
- Learning Units allow the Faculty Member to group materials together and provide more control over how the documents will open and be displayed. Options should be determined by how the Faculty Member wants students to access and use the materials in the unit.
If you select the date and time restriction option, be certain to mark both the Display After and Display Until check boxes; dates must be valid in order for the feature to work correctly.
Other options include:
- Surveys in Blackboard are, by definition, anonymous. The Gradebook will note whether a user has taken the survey but will not provide data on how an individual answered a particular question. Blackboard does, however, provide an item analysis for the survey. See Assessments > Surveys for more information about surveys.
- Assignment allows the Faculty Member to create a link to a document that students download, complete and submit back to the Faculty Member. Once the Faculty Member has graded the assignment, the grade is automatically entered into the Gradebook and students can access their grade and Faculty Member comments. See Assignment Manager for how to use this feature.
- Discussion Board, Chat, Virtual Classroom, Group, and Tool: these options allow the Faculty Member to place a direct link from a Content Area to a discussion board, etc.
- Syllabus is a feature that allows the Faculty Member to create a simple syllabus from a customizable template. The syllabus opens directly into the Content Area.
- Offline Content allows the Faculty Member to point to files on a CD that students load into their individual PCs. If you have lots of large, static files (PowerPoints or multimedia), they can be burned to CD and distributed to students, who can then view them locally, without worrying about long download times.
- SCORM, IMS and NLN are standards for packaged Content imported into Blackboard. NIU does not provide support for importing these formats.
Adding Course Materials: Two Methods
Text can be added directly to a provided text box or can be linked to the appropriate section of a course. How text is added should be determined by several factors:
- How long is the text? Keep scrolling to a minimum by linking to longer documents rather than adding the text to the text box.
- How many separate text items will be listed? Rather than having a long listing of separate documents, can the information be combined, put into folders or linked?
- Will students need to download the information? Word, text, PDF, HTML, Excel, and PowerPoint files can be linked to the Content Areas for items that students need to access.
Method 1: Add text directly to a text box. Entire text will be displayed on the section page. There are two ways to do this: copying and pasting from an existing document or typing directly into the text box.
Using Copy and Paste from an existing document.
- Click Add Item
- Name the item
- Change text color if desired (darker colors provide best display) by clicking on the provided color palette.
- Open the document to be copied (Word, WordPerfect, etc.).
- Highlight, then copy (Control C on the keyboard) the text you want.
- Click into the textbox and paste (Control V on the keyboard) the text.
- Original formatting will be lost (bold, italic, line spacing, etc.), but can be replicated with the text box tools.
- Spell check.
Typing text in provided box.
- After naming item, begin typing text directly into the text box.
- Blackboard will not save what you have typed until you click Submit. You will not be able to leave this screen without losing your text unless you first save by pressing Submit.
- Directions for or descriptions of linked documents can be added to the text box.
Use the provided editing tools to make Formatting changes to text.
- Clicking <html> opens a window that accommodates html coding.
- A URL or weblink, typed in its entirety (http://www.niu.edu) will be an active link.
- Preview provides a look at the text before saving.
- Be certain to use Spell Check.
Method 2: Link to file:
- Click Add Item. Type item name.
- Browse and select text file to link:
- If desired, type a NAME for the file that will be displayed. If you choose not to do this, the actual file name will be the linked text.
- Special action: link to file is standard choice, but Blackboard will allow you to choose to open a media file in the list of files or to automatically unzip a file upon opening.
- The unpackage feature is especially useful for large, zipped PowerPoint files.
- File Options:
Modifying Existing Entries
Go to the Control Panel and select the appropriate Content Area
Folder information: To modify, check tracking or adaptive release information, copy or delete existing text at the folder level, click Modify, Manage, Copy or Remove
- Make necessary changes and Submit
- Copy information to another folder or course. See Course Copy > Archiving Course Materials.
- Manage provides a means to assign restrictions to assignments and track their use. See Adaptive Release.
- Folders and documents may be reordered by using the down arrow next to the numbers.
Item information: Click on Modify after the desired item.
- Edit desired information and Submit to save changes.
- To update an attached file:
- Edit item
- Remove old file
- Submit to update page
- Now click on Modify for the same item
- Browse and find the updated file to attach
- Submit to save the updated file.
- NOTE: You might want to change slightly the name of the updated file to avoid confusion. If it appears that the old file continues to be displayed, try leaving and reentering the course or refreshing the browser. This will bring up the newer version of the file.
Find more answers...
Are you looking for more information related to posting course content in Blackboard? Review the answers to frequently asked questions regarding course content in Blackboard. Also, consider attending one of the upcoming Blackboard workshops.
Last Updated: 09/05/2007
