How to get a course shell on Blackboard 

In order to use Blackboard for teaching you will need four things:

1. A Blackboard account (designer/ instructor, or both).
2. A course shell on Blackboard (this is where the course content and tools are).
3. Student accounts, so that students can login to your course shell.
4. Practice time.

Blackboard Instructor account

Blackboard is a secure environment. In order for you to get access to Blackboard, you need an authorized Blackboard account. To start this process, contact the Information Technology Service Desk and request an ASAR access form, or download it here http://www.tru.ca/its/hdesk/accessrequestlform.html

Be prepared to provide access details when requesting a Blackboard account such as: role, same access as, or any other information that will help creating the Blackboard account. Once your account request has been processed, the logon details are emailed to you. This will include your user name, password, and logon links.

Student’s gain access to the server and course shells differently; this is described in section 3. Additional information for students, on how to access Blackboard is found here http://www.tru.ca/its/labs/blackboard_for_students.html

Course Shell on Blackboard

Blackboard course shells are the places that students and instructors access via a Blackboard account to deliver and participate in online courses. Blackboard course shells provide tools like: announcements, quizzes, assignment tools, grade book, mail, discussions, calendars, media libraries, web link and much more.

When you need a new course shell, email the Information Technology Service Desk at itservicedesk@tru.ca or call 1-250-852-6800 with the details needed to create the course shell.

There are three approaches to requesting a course shell, indicate one of the following:

• Request a new ‘empty’ course shell. This means that you will have to setup the content and tools for the course when you get access to the empty course shell.
• Request a ‘copy’ of a previous course shell. This means that you will need to own the course that is being copied, or that you have acquired permission in writing, to copy a course from somewhere else.
• Request that an existing course shell be ‘reset,’ and new students be put in. In this case you would have a course shell that you have used with an old set of students, but are completely finished with. Resetting the course shell allows you to prepare the course shell for a new term by un-enrolling old accounts and data such as discussion messages, chat logs, assignment submissions, grade book marks, ‘but’ certain things like columns in the grade book, and groups in the group manager will not be deleted.

Include the course name; and the acronym, course number and title of the course. For example: ENGL050 – Developing Writing Skills.

Include the access needed to the course shell and who needs it. In Blackboard, you can be a ‘designer,’ needed to do all course shell editing for look and feel, advanced configuration of certain tools, or ‘teacher,’ needed to access the grade book, and work with students directly. You can be added to the course as one or the other, or both in ‘combination’.

Student Accounts in Course shell

There are two ways you can get the students into your course and showing up in the grade book.

• Ask IT Services to add the accounts for you (Best).
• If the student accounts are already on Blackboard, you can add them through the grade book manually.

Ask IT Services to add the Accounts for you

Email the ITServicedesk@tru.ca the name of your course and ask that the students be added to your course. IT Staff will enter the course code onto your Blackboard course to associate it with the student accounts that come from the registrations area. In about one day, the accounts will automatically be added to the course for you, and students will have access after that. Any new students that register late will have their accounts automatically added to the course, if it has been setup this way.

Include in your request:

• The name of your course.
• The course code for your course (this really helps speed it up)

Adding Student Accounts yourself

If the students already have accounts on the Blackboard server, because they have already taken another course, or through other means, you can manually pull them into your course. In fact you can bring other instructors into your course via this method also.  

1. Logon to blackboard, and enter your course.
2. Make sure that you are in the ‘Teach’ tab, then on the lower left of your course look down to an area called ‘Instructor tools’
3. Look for the words ‘Grade Book’ under the Instructor Tools (click once on the word Grade Book)
4. Now you are in the Grade Book. Look across the top it says Create Column; Enroll Members; Import from Spreadsheet; Reorder Columns.
5. Click once on the word ‘Enroll Members’
6. In the box that is labelled ‘User name’ enter the student ID.
7. On the right look for the word ‘Student’ and put a check-mark in the box to the left of the word student.
8. Click once on the button called ‘Enroll’
9. Continue doing this until all your students are entered, and showing up in the list below.
10. Finally, at the bottom of this page (you may have to scroll down) there is a button called ‘Save’ click on this once, and this will add all the students that you had entered into your course.