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Managing Your Course

You've planned the organization of your materials, and you've built the course site. Now comes the fun part: make your site available to your audience.

Before You Go "Live"

Before you make your course available, you'll want to check it carefully. Use this Course Checklist (available as PDF) while doing your final preparations for going live.

Participation guidelines are very important in an online course. Unless you specify the type of participation you expect, your students may not make effective use of the course site. Below are some participation guidelines, available as PDF, that can be customized for your own use:

Making Your Course Available

Students cannot access the course until you make your course available to them:

  1. Go to your Control Panel
  2. Click "Settings" under Course Options
  3. Click "Course Availability"
  4. Select "Yes" and click the Submit button

Managing Online Discussions

You are probably an expert at facilitating real-time discussion in a traditional classroom, but an asynchronous online discussion may require some new skills... for facilitators as well as participants. Below are several resources specific to online discussion:

Assisting Your Students

The first line of defense for student assistance is the Help for Students page, accessible from the Help button on the top of any Blackboard course page.

Be prepared for students to contact you when they have questions about using Blackboard. Information Services has a Blackboard Support page on their website that students can refer to. Students may also call the Help Desk 24 hours a day 7 days a week at x4357 or send email to .

This concludes the tutorial component of these Blackboard information pages. The next page contains links to all of the resources listed in this tutorial, along with some additional tip sheets for Blackboard faculty.

See all of the Tutorial Resources ยป