Student Orientations
Providing orientation materials and a face-to-face orientation to your students can help guide their use of your course web site, identify any students with low levels of technology skill, and help you ensure that all your students are able to access the materials.
Provide a customized student guide to your site
The sample guide linked below has directions for several common tasks in Blackboard. Be sure to customize it to your own course by deleting the topics you don't need and adding extra information that is relevant to your own course.
- Download the customizable guide (2.5MB Rich Text Format document) or the complete, ready-to-go PDF version (181K PDF).
- Delete sections which describe parts of BlackBoard you don't use (e.g. Chat Rooms)
- Add information about your course, for example links to a rubric for threaded discussion posts.
- Print the guide and hand copies to your students on the first day of class. Discuss it in class.
Student orientation video
Send students a link to Getting Started (for students) online video for instructions about finding and logging on to Blackboard.
Conduct an online scavenger hunt
Another option is to write really clear instructions and have a low point assignment around getting into and orienting oneself to Blackboard. An online scavenger hunt or content-related assignment will help students used to each area.
- Design an activity that highlights important parts of your BlackBoard site.
- Assign it (hand it out if your class meets face-to-face) during the first week of class.
Take your class on a tour of your site
Reserve a Computer-on-Wheels, or if you teach in a computer-equipped classroom, spend some time on the first day of class showing students important parts of your site. Use the opportunity to discuss what they will find on the site, specific important areas of your site, and expectations. This approach is even more effective with the customized student guide.
- Check whether your room has a fixed-mount computer. If not, contact Instructional Computing (ichelp@highline.edu, or ext. 4880) to reserve a Computer-on-wheels (COW).
- Take the class on a tour of the site, highlighting important parts and discussing effective use of the site.
- Highlight key pages in the custom student guide.
Do a hands-on activity in a computer lab
Reserve a computer lab, and do a hands-on activity during the first week of classes. The activity can either be a part of your course content or simply a hands-on tour of the site. As with the tour, use the activity to highlight important parts of the site and discuss expectations for use. The customized student guide also makes this approach more effective.
- Reserve a computer lab. For classes that do not pay a computer lab fee, labs can be reserved 3 times per quarter.
- During the class session, take the class on a tour of the site, highlighting important parts and discussing effective use of the site. Or conduct an activity related to your content (e.g. using a course module, or other on-line resource from your site).
- Highlight key pages in the custom student guide.
