Blackboard Essentials for Teachers -- Table of Contents -- Blackboard Essentials for Teachers -- Credits -- About the Author -- About the Reviewers -- www.PacktPub.com -- Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more -- Why Subscribe? -- Free Access for Packt account holders -- Preface -- What this book covers -- What you need for this book -- Who this book is for -- Conventions -- Reader feedback -- Customer support -- Errata -- Piracy -- Questions -- 1. The Blackboard Experience -- Home page -- Announcements -- Discussion Board -- Gradebook -- Content Page -- Learning Module -- Blog -- Forum -- Uploaded files -- Video -- Wiki -- Assignment -- Test -- Groups -- Summary -- 2. Organizing a Course with Pages and Learning Modules -- Adding Content Areas to hold and organize course content -- What is Content Area? -- How to add a Content Area -- What's next? -- Adding a Blank Page tool, which can hold any content or links that you want -- What is a Blank Page? -- How to add a Blank Page -- Adding a Blank Page to your course -- Adding a Blank Page to the Content Area -- What's next? -- Composing a page with the HTML editor -- What's next? -- Creating a sequential path for the student to work through, using a Learning Module -- When to use a learning path -- How to add a learning path -- Adding a Learning Module to a Content Area -- What's next? -- About the Availability and View settings -- Keeping students informed with Course Tools -- What are Course Tools? -- How to add Course Tools -- Adding a Course Tool to the Course Menu -- Adding a Course Tool to the home page -- Summary -- 3. Adding Static Material to a Course -- Adding a file for students to download -- File versus item -- Content Collections -- How to add a file -- Adding an item -- What's next? -- Adding a video to your course -- Uploading a video in your course.

Linking to a video that is on another site -- Embedding a video on a Blank Page -- Embedding a video that is hosted on another site -- What's next? -- Adding a web link to your course -- Adding a link to an external website -- Adding a link to a Course Asset -- Adding an image to your course -- Adding an image to a Content Area -- Summary -- 4. Discussion Boards -- About Discussion Boards -- Creating forums with Discussion Board -- Making Discussion Board available to students -- Adding a link to Discussion Board on the Course Menu -- Creating a link to a forum -- Managing a forum -- Collecting posts in a forum -- Grading posts in a forum -- Summary -- 5. Blogs and Wikis -- About blogs -- Individual versus class blogs -- Blogs Course Tool link -- Creating a blog -- Making blogs available to students -- Adding a link to the Blogs page -- Creating a link to a blog -- Managing a blog -- Grading blogs -- Deleting and editing entries and comments -- About wikis -- Creating a wiki -- Adding a link to the Wikis page -- Summary -- 6. Assignments -- About assignments -- Adding an assignment -- Responding to an assignment -- Summary -- 7. Testing Students -- Creating a test -- Creating a blank test -- Determining the behavior of questions by using Question Settings -- Adding and creating questions on Test Canvas -- Adding the test to a page in your course -- Setting the Test Options page -- Creating questions -- Navigating to the Test Canvas page -- Enter the type, title, and question text -- Adding answers and answer feedback -- Adding categories, keywords, and notes -- Other types of questions -- Calculated formula questions -- Calculated numeric -- Either/Or-True/False, Yes/No, Right/Wrong, Correct/Incorrect -- Essay -- File Response -- Filling in the Blank and Multiple Blanks -- Hot Spot -- Jumbled Sentence -- Matching.

Multiple Answer and Multiple Choice -- Opinion Scale/Likert -- Ordering -- Quiz Bowl -- Short Answer -- Random blocks versus question sets -- Question pools, the source for random blocks -- Question sets: fewer limits, greater choices -- Which should I use: Random Block or Question Set? -- Creating a question pool -- Creating a random block -- Creating Question Set -- Summary -- 8. Working with Groups -- Creating groups -- Creating a single group with manual enrollment -- Creating a group with self enrollment -- From the student's point of view- self-enrollment into a group -- Creating multiple groups at once -- How group settings affect activities -- Sending e-mails to members of a group -- Summary -- 9. Communicating with Students Using E-mails, Messages, and Announcements -- The difference between e-mails, messages, announcements, and alerts -- Sending an e-mail to your students -- Sending messages -- Posting announcements -- Summary -- 10. Using Collaborate/CourseSites Live -- Making your first online meeting a test session -- Making Collaborate available to you and your students -- Launching the Collaborate tool -- Configuring audio and video -- Showing a PowerPoint slideshow -- Using basic whiteboard tools -- Using the chat -- Using emoticons during a Collaborate session -- Talking in Collaborate -- Taking your students on a web tour -- Dropping your students on a web page with Web Push -- Sharing an application on your computer -- Giving a student the ability to share an application -- Whiteboarding over a shared application -- Summary -- Before the session -- During the session -- After the session -- 11. Grading Students -- Viewing Grade Center -- Finding things that need to be graded -- Smart Views -- Creating Grading Periods -- Creating categories -- Showing, hiding, and moving rows -- Some examples of filtering and finding.

Assigning and entering grades -- Screen Reader Mode -- Manually overriding an automated grade -- Entering all of the students' grades for an activity -- Preparing a report for grades -- Adding a calculated column -- Reporting versus downloading grades -- Summary -- Index.