WOOL Blog: Ram-ping Up Your Instructional Technology

In this post, you will find an overview of the one of the most useful pieces of software available in the Blackboard toolkit: Respondus Lockdown Browser. Respondus Lockdown Browser is a web browser just like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Microsoft Edge, but with a few extra features designed for assessments in the modern classroom. Respondus Lockdown Browser works with Blackboard to make exams more secure. When using the Respondus Browser to take an exam, students are unable to open other computer programs, windows or tabs in the browser, and copy, paste, or print. This makes Respondus Lockdown Browser ideal for proctored environments, such as a computer lab or classroom, where students take the exam together and at a common time. For fully online courses where you may never meet your students, Respondus offers an additional layer of security to help ensure academic integrity: Respondus Monitor. In addition to the features of Respondus Browser, Monitor enables a student...

When your course is created in Blackboard, it is created with a default course menu. While this menu can be useful as is, customizing the menu can help you create more intuitive navigation for your learners. [1] To begin, hover over one of the items on your course menu and click the drop-down arrow. Here you are able to rename, hide, or delete the link. Delete any items you don't need. Do note if you delete a content folder containing content, you will also delete that content. [2] To reorder the course menu, hover over an item and click on the up-down arrow beside the item you want to move until. Drag and drop the item in its new location on the course menu. (Note: If you're having issues moving items on the course menu, first try to clear your browser's cache, close the browser, and reopen Blackboard:  How to clear your cache in Chrome , How to clear your cache in Firefox ) [3] You may also add a variety of items to your course menu. You may link to a conten...

In Blackboard, the course entry point is the first page students see when they access your course. By default, the course entry point is set to the Home Page tool, show below. However, it can be more helpful for both you and your students to alter the course entry point to a location or tool more useful for your course - or even for a certain time during the semester. To change the course entry point, navigate to Teaching Style under the Customization menu. Simply choose a new entry point from the drop down menu located halfway down the Teaching Style page. That's it! You might choose to change this to another tool you make use of more often, such as Announcements or the Discussion Board. Also, know this course entry point can be updated at anytime, so consider updating to to any location that may better suite the course. For example, set the entry point to a Getting Started section for the first week of class. Once students get acclimated to the course, swit...

If you've used Blackboard to grade student assignments, then you're likely familiar with the integrated inline grading features provided through Crocodoc. Crocodoc allowed students and instructors to view PDF and Word files directly within Blackboard and add annotations such as comments, highlights, strike outs, and drawings to the submitted assignment. However, Crocodoc displayed only a very limited number of file types. Winthrop University has upgraded to Box as the inline grading tool. PDF and Word files are still displayed directly within Blackboard, but Box offers many more supported file types for inline viewing including picture files such as .jpeg and .png, video files such as .mp4, and sound files such as .mp3. For a full list of supported file types, please visit the following site: File Types and Fonts Supported in Box Content Preview Here's a side-by-side comparison of the two views. The one on the left is the old Crocodoc view, and the one on the right is t...

In this blog post, we will show you how to quickly resolve a common playback issue with embedded videos in your Blackboard course. After copying your course content into your new sections for the semester, you may have noticed certain embedded videos display the error message shown below. This issue can often be resolved in less than a minute by following these steps. First, access the edit menu for the location where the video is embedded. Click on the yellow video placeholder in the text box, and click the "edit embedded media" option. On the following screen, you will see a drop down pane labelled "Type". To correct the playback issue, toggle from HTML 5 Video to Iframe, and then back to HTML5 Video. Select "update" and submit your changes. Your video should now play correctly within the browser. If you still have issues with video playback or have any questions about this process, please do not hesitate to contact us at...

As we head toward the end of the semester, you have probably begun thinking about your Spring 2018 courses. We have blogged before about some of the helpful features in Blackboard that make preparing for a new semester easier: copying materials into your new courses , setting availability and due dates efficiently , and exporting or archiving your older courses for safe-keeping. Likewise, making tweaks to your syllabus, updating your assignment descriptions, or replacing older presentations with a new ones can also eat up valuable time. In this post, you will find a quick way to replace older files and documents with new ones using the "Overwrite File" option in the Content Collection. First, some helpful background information: each document you upload to Blackboard is automatically added to the Content Collection. For example, you will find a copy of your syllabus in the Content Collection if you have added it somewhere in your course. A. Syllabus as it appears in ...

It's that time of year again. With advising upon us, you will soon have students knocking on your door with a proposed schedule in hand. It is likely that some of your advisees will be considering online coursework for the first time, and they may be unsure if this type of coursework is right for them. While you may know your advisees well enough to make a more personalized recommendation, you can also point them to our Online Learning Readiness Self-Assessment. This assessment is a short questionnaire consisting of 12 questions focusing on your advisees' learning disposition, technical abilities, and expectations for online coursework. After answering each question, students will be presented with a short evaluation of how well-suited or prepared they are for taking an online course. While this may not be the sole factor in decided to take an online course, we hope it provides a helpful foundation for your advisees' decisions. You can access the online learning readine...