Customizing Your CMS « Program for Online Teaching

Using Open Office to create good-looking pages

Laura Paciorek’s screencast of how she uses OpenOffice to make pages as html files that can be used in Blackboard or anywhere on the web.

Model: Chapter-based design

Handout #3 for Beginners Workshop

A graphic showing setup for chapter-based menu in Blackboard or another LMS.

Storyboard Design #1 [pdf]

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by Pilar Hernández

How to point your Bb9 class elsewhere

Escape from Blackboard 9

At many colleges that use Blackboard, every class is given a Bb course. If your course or materials are elsewhere, the presence of a Bb class is just confusing. Here’s how to point your Bb class elsewhere.

Step by step:
Open your class in Blackboard.
Select Customization.
- Check Style and make sure the course entry point is Announcements.
- Go to Tool Availability. Uncheck everything except the Announcements (leave all three checks there)
On the menu itself, for each item other than Announcements, use the arrow to delete them.
You should now be on the Announcements page. Make sure Edit Mode is on.
Create an Announcement.
If you are using Moodle or another LMS where each course has its own URL, point
them directly to that course. (In other words use “http://miracosta.mrooms.net/course/view.php?id=339″, not “http://miracosta.mrooms.net”.)
Or you can point them to an information page about your class.

Then be sure to make this information available to students:
Customize – Properties
Set availabillity to Yes.

Lisa M Lane