Things staff need to know about Blackboard 9

Copying text from Word

Copying text from Word and pasting into the text editor in Blackboard will also copy across hidden Word formatting which can cause various problems in Blackboard.

We would strongly recommend typing your content directly into your Blackboard course and then using the text editor to format the text. Alternatively, when you copy from Word, paste first into an application such as Notepad which will strip out any formatting. Then copy from Notepad and paste into the text editor in Blackboard.

In some areas where the text editor is in use, you will have access to a new ‘Paste from Word’ function. For more information on how to use this, please see our Paste from Word guidance.

Wimba Voice Authoring

If using Internet Explorer 7, the Wimba Voice Authoring tool will not display correctly with the ‘Mashup option’ set to ‘Thumbnail’. It will however display correctly when the ‘Mashup option’ is set to ‘Embed Audit Applet’. This issue has been raised with the product vendors.

Linking to external websites

If an external link is not set to open in a new window, when a user clicks on the link the webpage will be displayed in the Blackboard frame with a red message above it stating ‘The content below is outside the Blackboard Learn environment’.

example screenshot showing a external link opened within the Blackboard frame and the red message

As the colour formatting of this message may cause some users difficulty in reading it, we recommend setting your external links to open in new windows. This is a setting when creating or editing your link called ‘Open in New Window’ under the ‘Options’ area.

Course links in Announcements

If you include a Course Link in an announcement, it will show in the announcement within Blackboard but it will not be included in any e-mail notification.

Prompted to login whilst already in Blackboard

If you receive a prompt to login when attempting to open a peice of content in Blackboard, you may need to delete your cookies. Please follow the instructions we have provided on our Clearing Cookies page.

New process for packaged files

The old option of ‘unpackage this file’ has been removed in the latest release of Blackboard (9.1). Please see our Packaged Files guidance for details of the new process for uploading and creating links to packages from your course.

Sending E-mail

If you see the message ‘There must be at least one valid recipient e-mail’ when attempting to e-mail a group of students, you will need to first make the group available. Your e-mail will then be sent.

For instructions on making a group available to students, please see our Creating Single Groups guidance.

Roster / Register

In the latest release of Blackboard we have changed to the UK Language Pack. What was known as the ‘Roster’ is now the ‘Register’.

Deleting announcements copied from previous courses

There was a problem with the creation of some announcements in the previous version of Blackboard which caused errors when they were deleted. If you copy announcements from a course used in the previous version and then attempt to delete them, you may still experience errors. Announcements created in the latest version of Blackboard should not experience this issue.

The problem can easily be resolved by moving the announcement you are trying to delete so that it is the last in the list and then deleting it.

Wikis

Blackboard 9.1 has introduced its own Wiki tool and we have therefore switched from using the Learning Objects Teams LX Wiki tool to the new Blackboard one.

For further information please see our guidance on Wikis.

Grade Centre changes

In the latest release of Blackboard, the Grade Centre has received a number of enhancements. As a result, some of the buttons have changed on the ‘View Grade Details’ page.

In the previous version, instructors would select the ‘Open Attempt’ button to view a students’ submission and enter a grade. In the new version, instructors can either select ‘Grade Attempts’ or ‘View Grade’.

For further information, please see our Grade Centre guidance.

Course Files

In version 9.1 of Blackboard, any files that an instructor uploads to a course will be stored in an area called ‘Course Files’ within the Content Collection. This enables instructors to be able to clearly see and access a courses files and manage them more effectively.

The Course Files area contains a recycle bin. If you delete an item from your Course Files area, it will go into the recycle bin. Deleted Course file items will remain in the recycle bin for 15 days, after which they will be permanently deleted.

Please note: If you delete an item from your course, it does not get deleted from the Course Files area or go into the recyle bin. Only files deleted directly from the Course Files area are put in the recycle bin.

For further information, please see our Course Files guidance.

IE8 compatibility with Blackboard

Blackboard have only certified use of Internet Explorer 8 with Compatibility View ON.

For further information about Internet Explorer’s Compatibility View, please visit the Microsoft website.

Students accessing documents created in Office 2007

As you are probably aware, UWE PCs now have Office 2007 installed. Students may experience problems opening documents created in Office 2007 if they do not have Office 2007 installed on their own PC.

To help students with this, we have added some guidance to the student ‘Welcome’ tab in Blackboard and also the student equivalent of ‘Things you need to know about Blackboard 9’. This includes links to free Microsoft downloads which will enable them to open Office 2007 documents.

Opening documents and links in Internet Explorer 7 or 8

The default security settings in Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 may prevent some users from opening course documents and opening links to other websites. Please note you will need to close and re-open Internet Explorer for these settings to take effect.

Opening and Downloading documents

When attempting to download documents, users will see a message above the Blackboard frameset stating:

“To help protect your security, Internet Explorer has blocked this site from downloading files to your computer. Click here for options."

If this happens, you need to add Blackboard to your trusted sites and then set the trusted sites zone security setting to medium low, as per instructions below.

Select ‘Tools’, then ‘Internet Options’
Select the ‘Security’ tab, then ‘Trusted Sites’ and then select the ‘Sites’ button
Type ‘https://blackboard.uwe.ac.uk’ in the ‘add this website to to the zone’ field and select ‘Add’
Select ‘Close’
Under the ‘Security level for this zone’ field, drag the bar until it shows as ‘medium - low’.

If after doing the above you are still having problems, you can try changing the ‘Custom Level’ for Trusted Sites as follows:

Select the ‘Custom Level’ button
Scroll down to ‘Downloads’ and select the radio button next to ‘Enable’ for ‘Automatic prompting for file downloads’
Select the ‘OK’ button.

Opening links to websites

When attempting to follow links to a website, users may see the message:

“Navigation to the webpage was cancelled"

If this happens, you need to add Blackboard to your trusted sites and then set the trusted sites zone security setting to medium low, as per instructions above.

If after doing this you are still having problems, you need to change the ‘Custom Level’ for Trusted Sites as follows:

Select ‘Tools’, then ‘Internet Options’
Select the ‘Security’ tab and then ‘Trusted Sites’
Select the ‘Custom Level’ button
Scroll down to ‘Miscellaneous’ and select the radio button next to ‘Prompt’ for ‘Display mixed content’.
Select the ‘OK’ button.

Once you have set the prompt option, when you follow a link you will be presented with the following prompt:

Internet Explorer 8

example screenshot of the IE8 prompt saying: Do you want to view only the webpage content that was delivered securely?

If you wish to view the page, you must select ‘No’.

Internet Explorer 7

example screenshot of the IE7 prompt saying: Do you want to display the nonsecure items?

If you wish to view the page, you must select ‘Yes’.

Don’t forget to close and re-open Internet Explorer for these settings to take effect.

Older Browser Compatibility

Some older browsers such as Internet Explorer 6 and Firefox 2 are not compatible with Blackboard 9. Please see the Operating System and Browser Compatibility tables for more information of which browser versions are recommended.

The majority of UWE pcs will have Internet Explorer 7 installed. If you find that your UWE pc still has Internet Explorer 6, please contact the ITS Helpdesk to request that it is upgraded to Internet Explorer 7. The ITS Helpdesk can be contacted on 0117 3283612 or by e-mail to ITS Helpdesk.

List Course Users

In the previous version of Blackboard, in order to list all users in the course, instructors would need to enter a percentage sign (%) in the search field. This has changed in version 9.1 with a new ‘Not blank’ search option in the ‘Users’ area of the Control Panel. Using this option with nothing in the search field will now return a list of all course users.

Group creation using Internet Explorer

There is an issue when creating a manual group in Blackboard 9 using Internet Explorer. Under the ‘Membership’ section, the width of the column ‘Items to Select’ gradually decreases as you move names over to the ‘Items Selected’ column, until you are unable to see the list of names remaining in the ‘Items to Select’ column.

A work around would be to select multiple names in the ‘Items to Select’ column and then move them over in one go. To do this, hold the ‘Ctrl’ key down as you select the names.

Alternatively, use a different browser such as Firefox.

This issue has been reported to Blackboard but they have determined that it is a bug specific to Internet Explorer and does not reside in the Blackboard code.

Discussion Thread Ordering

If a thread is edited, it’s creation date will be overwritten by the date it was modified. Therefore when viewing the list of forum threads in date order, they may not necessarily be listed in order of date created.

Printing Blackboard pages

When printing a page within Blackboard, for example a Test, to ensure that the relevant content is printed we would suggest that you first maximise the content area by using the ‘Hide Course Menu’ button as shown below.

example screenshot showing the Hide Course Menu button

Once the Course Menu is hidden, right click in the content area and select ‘Print Preview’. Select ‘Only the selected frame’ from the drop-down options and then print.