How to add your Blackboard calendar to Google calendar

Posted on by Tel Team

You can add your Blackboard calendar to Google as follows:

  1. Click on your name in the top right of Blackboard
  2. Click on the calendar icon
  3. In the bottom left of the Calendar you will see a link called “Get External calendar link”. Click on this
  4. Copy the link (Ctrl + C  or Cmd + C for Mac)
  5. Open your Google calendar
  6. Under “Other calendars” on the left click the drop down arrow
  7. Choose “Add by URL” and paste in the link (Ctrl + V or Cmd + V for Mac), then click “Add Calendar”
  8. Please note the calendar name may appear initially as a long URL (web address) , but this will then change to University of Bristol.
  9. You may wish to change the Calendar name “University of Bristol” e.g. to Blackboard . To do this click the dropdown to the right of the calendar and select Calendar settings, then edit the name and Save.

Please note that any editing of events has to be done in Blackboard.

Important information on email from Blackboard

Posted on by hilary

In the last week an issue was identified where emails sent from University systems – like Blackboard, or MyBristol – may have been wrongly identified as spam and automatically consigned to individual Gmail account spam folders. This could mean that important information may not have reached all of the intended recipients.  The issue has now been resolved but you may wish to check your spam folder, and also advise your students to check theirs. On a more general note, checking spam folders regularly to ensure emails have not been incorrectly identified as spam is recommended.

Quick Tools

Posted on by digitaleducation

Quick Tools, on your Blackboard home page, gives instructors access to two tools –

1) Course Availability – With one click you can manage the visibility of courses to your students. By switching the status from Off to On the course is instantly visible to the students enrolled. This saves you having to go in to the course control panel of each course and updating the availability.

Please note that this controls the settings for visibility to all students not your own view of Blackboard.

2) Post Announcement – Using this tool you can send the same announcement to more than one course. Select the courses you wish to post the announcement, type the message, select email if required and submit. This will then be posted in all of the selected courses. At the current time the tool only allows for text only announcements and there is no ability to attach files.

If you have any feedback about this tool or any questions please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk

 

Blackboard Notifications – update 8th October

Posted on by Tel Team

The testing we have been undertaking to ensure the collection and distribution of Notifications and Updates in Blackboard can run without affecting overall performance is nearly complete.

We are happy that the solution we have in place will allow these to work as expected. To test this we will be switching the distribution back on overnight tonight – please note that to start off with you will receive a larger than normal number while the system catches up.

If you have any questions please email TEL-Help@bristol.ac.uk

 

Blackboard Notifications – update 4th October

Posted on by Tel Team

In order to address the slow running of Blackboard we have taken the action of switching off the collection of Notifications (both web and mobile) on the advice of Blackboard and our colleagues in IS. Since making this change to the system we have not had any problems with the speed of the service.

We are currently addressing these problems and are hopeful that we will be able to switch the Notifications back on as soon as possible.

Apologies once again for any inconvenience caused by the slow running of the service earlier this week.

If you have any questions, please email TEL-Help@bristol.ac.uk

New academic year Blackboard activity

Posted on by Hanrahan Highland

The new academic year has begun, and many students are eagerly trying to access their courses on Blackboard. When we rolled the SITS-linked courses over from last year, we made them unavailable to students, so that staff could make any changes they wanted to before releasing them to a new cohort. Once a course is ready for students to use, you should ensure that it is made available to them, as follows:

  • Click on the course
  • Under Control Panel, click on Customisation
  • Click on Properties
  • In section 3, Set availability, select Yes
  • Click Submit.

Your course is now available to the enrolled students.

You can also do this faster, for multiple courses at once, by using the new “Qwickly” module on the Home tab:

  • Click “Course Availability”
  • Click the On/Off button next to the correct course.

Note that SITS-linked 2014-15 courses are still available to both staff and students – this is a change from previous years where they have been made unavailable.  If you wish to stop your students having access to previous years courses for any reason, simply make them unavailable using the method above.

One other thing you will want to do is organise your courses by year (so you don’t accidentally edit the old courses) fortunately this can be done in a couple of clicks –

Move your mouse to the top right of the My Courses box on your Blackboard home page and click on the small cog wheel icon. On the page that opens, under “1. Terms”, tick “Group by Term”, then click on “Submit”. Note that you can also choose which courses and terms you want displayed, and whether you want to see course names, course IDs, or both. (Here is a 45-second video on how to use group courses using terms.)

Blackboard Mobile Log in Problems – Update

Posted on by Tel Team

Users may still be experiencing problems logging in to the Blackboard Learn Mobile App. Please note that this appears to be affecting a small percentage of users.

A solution if you are experiencing problems is to ensure you are using the latest version of the App and to delete and re install the App on your device.

We have also now raised this problem with the Blackboard Mobile team and we have a support call open with them to try and resolve any ongoing problems.

Apologies for any problems this may be causing. If you have any questions please email TEL-Help@bristol.ac.uk