Blackboard

Thousands of courses taught at the CUNY colleges have an active Blackboard presence. Some faculty use Blackboard to store and provide students with electronic course materials while others create fully or partially-online course environments. Some of your courses might be conducted entirely through Blackboard without any on-campus sessions. If you are assigned to a course and your professor uses Blackboard you can use it whether you are taking a fully in-person course, a hybrid, or an online asynchronous course.

This section contains resources for finding answers to common Blackboard issues, logging in to Blackboard, tips and tools for getting started,  even for getting organized with Blackboard, and provides you with contact information for those who seek direct, one-on-one support available at your college.

What is Blackboard?

Blackboard  is the online course management system (CMS) used at CUNY that allows students and faculty to participate in classes delivered online. The Blackboard platform hosts hybrid and online courses and stores documents like syllabi, PDFs, digital library materials, audio and video clips which can be accessed to complement face-to-face teaching. Blackboard enables instructors to provide students with course materials, discussion boards, virtual chatting, online quizzes, and even conduct synchronized ‘as-live’ courses with an entire class through Blackboard Collaborate.

Blackboard Tutorials:

Whether you’re looking for a short video on a specific topic or a beginner’s guide, find the help you need here:

CUNY Blackboard Student User Guides  http://www.cuny.edu/about/administration/offices/CIS/functions/bb/userguides/student.html

Hostos Community College offers a comprehensive series of documents and links to help you through the process of establishing a presence in your Blackboard-centered courses. Visit this page for video tutorials that have been created by Blackboard dedicated to the specific aspects of working inside a Blackboard course, staying organized and communicating to your classmates.

New York City College of Technology created short Flash videos that can quickly get you up to speed when using Blackboard 9: http://websupport1.citytech.cuny.edu/studentbb.html

Blackboard On-demand learning center release 9.1 http://ondemand.blackboard.com/students.html

Free Plugins for Blackboard

The following is a set of links to free applications that may need to be downloaded to view content created by an instructor in Blackboard.

• Streaming Video
• Office Applications – PC
• Office Application – Macintosh
• Other Viewers
• Real Player – For files with the .ra, .ram, or .smil extension. Download the “Free Real Player.”
• QuickTime – For .mov files. You want to “Download the Free Player.”
• Windows Media Player – For .wmv files. Download the player which corresponds to your operating system (Windows XP, 2000, Mac OSX, etc.)

• Online “Netiquette”: Being a responsible ‘net’ citizen

  March 1, 2013Alyson Vogel
    Online Netiquette This document frames a courtesy and respect policy and set of guidelines for students posting comments in their online classes and is a helpful one-page addition to your online course suitable for your course documents section. It’s entitled Online ‘Netiquette’ – Being a responsible ‘net’ citizen in a digital world. The document is campus-specific to Lehman College as seen in a few bullets, but can be adapted for your own college using resources that abide by your college’s principles of community and campus policies governing computer use and student conduct. (See link to Online Netiquette.) CUNY Acceptable Use Policy: The City University of New York Policy on Acceptable Use of Computer Resources

• Blackboard FAQ’s and More

  November 20, 2012Maria Pagano
  While the information found above offers tutorials and plug-in information on Blackboard, this information was distributed by Blackboard and can sometime be confusing, or may take longer than anticipated to search.  Furthermore, the manual does not readily discuss what information a student might need to know before using Blackboard.  Below are a list of FAQ’s and information that a student might need to know before using Blackboard, Lehman College While some of this information is course specific to Lehman College Students, the page provides answers to many of the  frequently asked questions about Blackboard and Blackboard preparedness.