| Policies, Procedures & Support | |
Policies & ProceduresIt is very important that you have read and understand all the policies and procedures for Blackboard. If you have any questions on these policies or procedures, please email Blackboard Support.
Blackboard Integration
Automatic Course Shell Creation
On the first day of the preceding quarter, courses will be created for the next quarter (Course Shell) in Blackboard. For example, on the first day of Fall 2007 (Sep. 17, 2007), Winter 2007 course shells will start appearing in Blackboard. A Course Shell is a course website without any content, which is available for you to use. Login to Blackboard through the My CalPoly Portal and add your content to the Course Shell. Students will be unable to view or access your course until you make it available. If you are teaching a cross listed course and only wish to use one of the Course Shells, please notify Blackboard Support.
Automatic Instructor Assignment to a Course Shell
The instructor information, listed in SIS, must be current in order for the Course Shell to be created accurately. If the instructor information in SIS for your course is listed as Staff, your Blackboard course will not be assigned to you. If your courses are not accessible to you from Blackboard and the instructor of record is Staff, you will have to contact your department. Your department (University Scheduler) will notify the University Scheduling Office, which will update SIS. The SIS data is sent to Blackboard M-F at 6am, so it could take up to 24 hours (M-F) before you will have access to the Blackboard course.
If you are team teaching a course, the first instructor listed in SIS will be assigned to the Blackboard course and will need to add and change the role of the other co-instructor(s).
Automatic Student Enrollment
On the first day of registration, enrolled students will be added into the Blackboard Course Shells. The enrollment data in your Blackboard courses will be updated M-F at 6am to keep up with add/drop, name changes, etc.
At the end of the third week, all dropped students (Red X) will be removed from your Blackboard courses.
Students who have enrolled through Capture or Power during the first two weeks will need to wait until the data is sent to Blackboard M-F at 6am, which can take up to 24 hours (M-F).
Student Course Access & Duration
All enrolled students will automatically be added to the corresponding Blackboard Course Shells. Once the instructor has made a course available the student will have access to that course (via the Portal) until it has been removed (one year and a quarter later). Students will not see your course link in the Portal until you make your course available. If you do not want your students to access the course after the quarter has been completed, then you must make your course unavailable.
Any Cal Poly faculty, staff or student may access Blackboard as a guest. All Course Shells have been automatically set with the default of no guest access. If you would like a guest to view your course, you may turn guest access on.
Blackboard Login/Access
All users (Cal Poly faculty, staff, and students) login to Blackboard through theca Portal(http://my.calpoly.edu). Only Cal Poly users can access Blackboard and therefore, your courses.
It has recently become policy that ITS is unable to provide Blackboard accounts to access courseware for non Cal Poly users (those who are not current faculty, staff or students) based on FERPA (privacy rights of the students).
Auxiliary accounts can be created to allow non Cal Poly users to access the Portal, Blackboard, email, and calendar. For more information please visit http://servicedesk.calpoly.edu/accounts_passwords/accounts/auxiliary.html. If you have questions about this, please contact the Service Desk.
Database Backup
The Blackboard server is backed up daily (differentials; daily & full; weekly). The back-ups (30 days) are for full restoration purposes only. If for some reason the system fails, these back-ups will be used to restore the database.
Note: It is not possible to restore an individual course, file, assignment, grade, discussion or test/survey through this backup process. If you have deleted or changed any of these individual items, ITS will not be able to retrieve them. It is important that you maintain your own copies and archives onto your own computer hard drive or burn to a CD.
- Full Course Archive: creates a permanent record of a course including all the content and user interactions. Archived Courses are a permanent record of the course.
- Export Course: creates a package of the course content only that can later be imported into a Blackboard system.
- Export Gradebook: download and save a Gradebook as a comma-delimited file for use in a spreadsheet program.
- Download Assignments: enables the Instructor to download Student assignments and save them.
Course Content Backup
Your course will remain in Blackboard for 5 quarters (ex: Fall 2005 courses will not be removed until the end of Fall 2006). If you teach your course more than once a year, you can copy your Fall 2005 course content into your Winter 2006 course with the Course Copy tool. You can also archive your course content (back-up to place on your desktop). This archive is a zip file of the course that can only be viewed within a Blackboard system.
Student Content Backup
Your course will remain in Blackboard for 5 quarters. If you would like to keep your student files after 5 quarters you must keep your own records of grades and assignments.
The instructor can export and save the gradebook with Blackboard's export feature. This information can be accessed in a spreadsheet program or saved as Excel.
All files uploaded into the Digital Dropbox and Assignments can be downloaded to the faculty's desktop computer and stored on the hard drive for future reference.