Want to Create a Course Website? Try Blackboard

If you've been thinking about creating a website for your course but don't know where to begin, you might want to investigate Blackboard, a system offered by the University of Oregon Libraries.

Blackboard provides the infrastructure to help you easily create full-featured course websites regardless of your class size or technical abilities. Typically, a Blackboard course consists of the following elements:

• announcements (such as class cancellations and other important informational items)
• course information, such as the syllabus
• staff information so students can more easily contact instructors and GTFs
• course documents for download
• assignments
• communication, which includes a discussion area, live chat capabilities and email links
• external links to other websites for further research
• student tools, such as a digital drop box for student submissions

These features can be activated or deactivated according to your needs. You can grant GTFs various levels of control over course data, and if you wish, you may limit access to the entire course site to only those students who are enrolled in the class.

Need help? The Library's Faculty Instructional Technology Training (FITT) Center can assist you in creating and configuring an online course. For more details, see http://libweb.uoregon.edu/fittc/

More information on Blackboard is available at http://blackboard.uoregon.edu/

To create a Blackboard course, see http://blackboard.uoregon.edu/local/generate.html