Suggestions for organizing your course in Blackboard

The announcement area is designed as a primary point of contact for your students. As the default item that appears in the course window, this is the ideal place to post time-sensitive material.

The staff information section is provided for instructors to post information about themselves, teaching assistants, and/or guest speakers. This personal touch will provide the students with a resource to look up the name, e-mail, office hours, or a picture of the course leaders.

The three areas that are designed to hold the majority of prepared course materials are Course Information, Course Documents, and Assignments.

• The materials posted here are typically much larger.
• The materials posted here may already be created in a word processing or HTML program.
• The materials posted here may be attachments that are not capable of being inserted directly into a text area or being viewed in a web browser.
• The materials here may need to be organized into a hierarchical manner so students can clearly understand the associations for each item.

While you may choose to use the Course Information, Course Documents, and Assignments areas in many ways, the following conventions are recommended for some basic course components. When you choose to add materials to a particular area, a drop-down menu with recommendations is provided.

The external links feature provides an area to reference useful websites in a course. This can be used to guide students on virtual "field trips" to websites containing relevant information, research, reports, or data.