Frequently Asked Questions

The IRT Center for Teaching with Technologies offers a number of ways for faculty members to learn more about Blackboard, among other topics. These include:

1. Scheduled Webinars: You can find our schedule by going to https://wpunj.edu/ctt/webinars
2. Consultations: To request a consultation with an instructional designer, please log into the IT Web Help Desk (http://www.wpunj.edu/help) and create a ticket with a request type of "Teaching with Technology Consultations."
3. Tutorials: Documentation and tutorials on using Blackboard can be found by visiting https://itwiki.wpunj.edu/index.php/Category:Blackboard_-_Faculty

Faculty members can request the creation of “Sandbox” course shells that can be used to practice using Blackboard Ultra. To do so, please log into the IT Web Help Desk (http://www.wpunj.edu/help) and create a ticket with a request type of "Blackboard" and a sub-type of “Ultra Sandbox Request.”

Additionally, you can (and may already) have access to a self-paced learning shell named “Blackboard Ultra Online Orientation.” If you are not currently seeing a link to that shell and would like access to it, please make that request through the IT Web Help Desk (http://www.wpunj.edu/help).

To log into Blackboard, use the same credentials and multi-factor authentication process used to log into most other campus systems (https://itwiki.wpunj.edu/index.php/Multifactor_Authentication). If you are unsure of what your username and password are currently set to, please visit https://wpconnect.wpunj.edu/mypwd/.

Blackboard can be accessed directly by using a supported device and browser to go to https://bb.wpunj.edu or https://www.wpunj.edu/blackboard. A link to Blackboard also appears in WP Connect and can be used to get to Blackboard, though it is good to know the web addresses used to access it directly. And finally, please note that Blackboard will work best if you use a recent version of Google Chrome as your browser on a computer system running a current version of either Windows or Mac OS as its operating system. Other platforms can result in compatibility issues with Blackboard.

As you initially log into Blackboard, you will find a navigation menu on the lefthand side of the screen. This is called the Base Navigation Menu, and it will take you to the following main areas in Blackboard Ultra:

1. Institution Page
2. Profile
3. Active Stream
4. Courses
5. Organizations
6. Calendar
7. Messages
8. Grades
9. Tools

To learn more about Blackboard Ultra’s Base Navigation menu, please visit https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Administrator/SaaS/User_Interface_Options/Ultra_Experience/Base_Navigation.

Blackboard’s online Help Center states that Blackboard Learn supports Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Microsoft Edge on both desktops and mobile devices. In our experience, however, we have found that you will have the best experience using Blackboard if you use an updated version of Google Chrome as your browser on a computer running a recent version of Windows or Mac OS as its operating system.

Students are added to course shells for courses in which they are officially enrolled seven days before a course is scheduled to begin. Please note, however, that course shells only become available to students after having been set to by their instructors. For instructions on how to make a course shell available, please visit https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Ultra/Courses/Course_Availability.

Course shells for credit-bearing courses at the university are created at least six weeks before a semester is scheduled to begin and will, at that time, become available to instructors who are appearing in the official schedule of courses as being assigned to teach them. If you have been asked to teach a course but have not yet been officially assigned to it, you will not see its Blackboard course shell until that assignment has been officially processed. But once you have been officially assigned as an instructor of record, that will be reflected in Blackboard within the next several hours.

To make it so that students who have been enrolled into a course shell are able to access it, you will need to make sure that it is not set to “Private.” Course shells can be set to Private, Open, or Complete. The first of these options, “Private,” makes it so that students will not be able to enter the course shell. The “Open” option allows students to enter the course shell and begin interacting with available assessments, discussions, etc. And finally, the “Complete” option gives students read-only access to the course shell, allowing them to view available content but not make any submissions or contributions.

For more about course shell availability, please visit https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Ultra/Getting_Started/Find_Your_Courses.

Please note that it can take several hours for changes in a student's enrollment status to be reflected in Blackboard. Additionally, please note that if a student has withdrawn from a course and/or been removed from it for any reason, that can also take several hours to be reflected in Blackboard.

If you are an instructor in both the course that currently contains the content and the one into which you want it to be copied, instructions on how to copy content into your Ultra course shell can be found by going to:

1. PDF Tutorial: https://bit.ly/wpu-bb-ccPDF
2. Video Tutorial: https://bit.ly/wpu-bb-ccvideo

If, however, you are looking to have content copied from one instructor's course shell into another's, we would need to receive permission from both instructors. Either instructor can initiate this process by logging into the IT Web Help Desk (http://www.wpunj.edu/help) and creating a ticket with a request type of "Blackboard."

There are two options available for instructors who wish to have students from multiple course sections combined into a single shell:

1. Course Merge, where you and the students would made exclusive use of whichever shell is designated the root/parent shell of the merge and the other(s) are disabled/inaccessible; or
2. Course Master shells, where a separate shell is created for you and all the students to make use of when you wish to work together, but with the original shells left active for when you wish to interact with the sections individually

Please note, however, that in both cases, all sections involved must be either sections of the same course or officially cross-listed. Additionally, all sections must have the same teaching assignments and must run concurrently. Any exceptions to these requirements can only be processed with the approval of the Registrar's Office.

More about these options can be found at the following page: http://www.wpunj.edu/bb/faculty/merge-master.pdf.

Course shells remain available to faculty members for two academic years, after which they are moved into archives for an additional five years. At the request of an instructor, a course shell that has been moved into archive can be restored to the Blackboard server.

Courses more than seven years old are no longer archived and cannot be retrieved or restored. If you wish to retain copies of your course shell for longer than this, you should save local copies of your course archives. Instructions on how to do so can be found at https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Ultra/Course_Content/Reuse_Content/Export_and_Archive_Courses.

Blackboard Ultra allows you to create static content items that learners can read, along with assessments and communication areas with which learners can interact. These include: Learning Modules, Folders, Documents, Links to websites, teaching tools, SCORM packages, tests, assignments, and discussions. For more about the types of content that can be created in Blackboard Ultra, and for instructions on how to create each, please visit https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Ultra/Course_Content/Create_Content/Create_Course_Materials/Types_of_Course_Content.

Blackboard allows users to upload/attach most file types, though restrictions might be placed on some executable programs. The more likely restrictions that users may encounter are related to filenames and file sizes, with Blackboard being unable to properly handle files with names that exceed 31 characters in length or make use of special characters (!, @, #, $, %, et al.). Additionally, Blackboard will prevent users from uploading files that are 100 MB in size or larger, making it not an appropriate place for storing videos and other large files.

All users at the university have access to Microsoft Office 365 accounts, which include a cloud storage service called OneDrive. For more about Microsoft Office 365, please visit https://itwiki.wpunj.edu/index.php/Microsoft_Office_365.

Additionally, it is worth noting that the university provides users with access to YuJa a streaming service that can be used to host videos, among other types of content. More about YuJa can be found at https://itwiki.wpunj.edu/index.php/YuJa.