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CDL WeeklyHints, Tips, and Tricks to Help Supercharge Your Online Classroom

Monday, April 20, 2009

Cool Links!

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Grade Center Question (Hiding a Column from Students) -

The following videoexplains/illustrates the process necessary to make a Grade Center column unavailable tostudent users:http://www6.miami.edu/bb/demos/fac/Grade_Center/Hide%20Column%20From%20Students/HideColumnFromStudents.html

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Free Clip Art Site -

The following site, published and maintained by Florida’s Educational Technology Clearninghouse, has a huge collection of free images for use by teachers andstudents:http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/index.htm

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Visual Text Box Editor -

This page explains and breaks down the Blackboard Visual TextBox Editor – the place where you input text for Assignments and Items in an online course:http://twuid.pbwiki.com/Visual+Text+Box+Editor+How+To+and+FAQ

Wiki How-To

Wikis - Creating a wiki in Blackboard

This tutorial explains what a Blackboard wiki is, and how to activate this feature in your course web site.

What is a Blackboard wiki?

A wiki within Blackboard is a page, or set of pages, that can be collaboratively edited by the instructor and bythe students enrolled in the class. It is one of the few tools available which allows students to add content to aBlackboard course web site. Students can edit and add pages, images and links. A log of all changes is kept, soit is easy to keep track of a given page's editorial history, and of students' editing activity.A current limitation of Blackboard wikis is that Safari on the Macintosh is not a supported browser for thisfunctionality. We recommend that Macintosh users use the latest version of Firefox.

Creating a wiki

1.Decide where you want to place the new wiki. The content area "Assignments" is a good location - we'lluse that for this tutorial.

In the left-hand navigation bar, click on

Control Panel

On the Control Panel page, in the Content Areas section, click on

Assignments

On the Assignments page, locate the pull-down menu on the right of the gray editing bar on top of the page. Click here and select

Wiki

. Then click

.5.On the Create Wiki page, give a name to the wiki.

In the "Select Members" section, create the group who will have editing access to the new wiki. Select astudent name, and then click the right arrow to add the student to the group. Repeat until you group iscomplete. You can also select "All Students" to give editing access to the entire class. Instructors and

TAs automatically have access to all wikis, so there is no need to add yourself to the list of members.7.The "Options" section allows you to configure access to the wiki further. Here is what these options do:

Do you want to make the content visible? - unless you set this to "Yes", the wiki will be hiddento everyone

Do you want to allow students to purge wiki pages? - We recommend setting this to "No".Purging is a permanent deletion with no possibility of retrieval.

Who do you want to allow to comment on wiki pages? - Choosing a commenting option allowsothers to comment on each wiki page without altering the actual page. We recommend enablingthis for the entire class.

Choose the dates and times for which group members will be allowed to edit the wiki - use thisoption if you want to enforce due dates on work done in the wiki. You do not have to set thesedates.

Choose the dates and times for which non-group members will be allowed to view the wiki - usethis option if you want to restrict the dates by which non-members can views their classmates'wikis. This allows you, for example, to create wiki sites for small group projects, and make thesites viewable to the entire class only after the student projects are completed.8.Class participants access wiki sites by clicking on the content area where you have placed them in theleft-hand navigation bar. If a student clicks on a wiki to which they do not have viewing access, s/he willsee an authorization denied message.

Frequently Asked Questions

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I have created a number of wikis for small group projects, but I don't want students to be able to seeeach others’ wikis. How do I do this?

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Click on "Modify" next to one of the wikis in question. Scroll down to the Options section, until youfind the option "Choose the dates and times for which non-group members will be allowed to view thewiki". Put a check mark in the "Display Until" box and choose a display date in the past.

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Contact Information

If you have any questions or information regarding any of the facts, tips, or tricks listedin this email, contact Amanda Miller at 7149 oramanda.miller@bellevue.edu. (Note:Please include a course id number with your question if that question is course-specific.)