Blackboard Support

The Teaching and Academic Support Center (TASC) is pleased to make UK's online course management system available to faculty and staff for the purposes of developing and delivering courses, as well as for online work group communication and file-sharing. The software available on the Ecourses server is the Blackboard course management system. Instructors may use Blackboard to develop online materials for courses that are either web-enhanced or delivered entirely online. Because Blackboard is very user-friendly, you will not need to know Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) in order to effectively post materials.

The following are areas of primary interest:

For more detailed help on instructor support and resources go to the Blackboard Support Page.

For questions concerning Blackboard usage, please contact Brett McDaniel, Instructional Technologist for Bb, at 257-8272 x 255.

For information about Blackboard training, please contact Claire Carpenter, Blackboard Coordinator, 257-8272 x 250.
claire@uky.edu
ph: 859-257-8272 x250

Exploring Blackboard
If your department or college would like to see a demo of Blackboard and its features, please send an email request to bbsupport@lsv.uky.edu to arrange a time. Claire Carpenter, Blackboard Coordinator, and her colleagues are available come to your area and give demos of 20-60 minutes.

If you plan or hope to offer your academic course as a UK distance learning course, please contact UK's Teaching and Academic Support Center as early in the planning and development process as possible. The TASC will be able to support you in a variety of ways, through online library services, instructional design, graphics, media creation, development, and programming. It is recommended that exploratory discussions with the TASC begin a year before you want your students to start the course. For details, contact Kathryn Cunningham, kdcunn2@email.uky.edu, Director of the Instructional Development Group (IDG).

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Blackboard Training (Bb101 Workshop)
Before requesting your first course space (a “course shell”) on the server, you must attend a hands-on Blackboard Orientation Workshop given by trainers from the Instructional Development Group or other authorized trainers around campus. For the schedule of half-day workshops offered by IDG each month, go to http://www.uky.edu/Blackboard/training.php.

Your academic unit may also offer workshops that meet this requirement; if you would like to ascertain whether attending a workshop not listed on the IDG schedule qualifies you to receive a course shell, please contact bbsupport@lsv.uky.edu.You may also contact bbsupport@lsv.uky.edu for information and/or referrals to other trainers’ schedules. Intermediate and advanced training and workshops in the use of Blackboard and other topics to support your work in distributed education are available throughout the academic year.

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Requesting a new course shell or a course renewal
After completing a Bb orientation workshop with an authorized trainer, you may proceed to request a new (empty) course shell. Please read each section of the Course Request Form carefully. You may wish to read it through entirely before filling out your information, to be sure you understand the responsibilities you will be agreeing to accept.

If you have previously taught on Bb at UK, do not revise your existing academic course shell prior to requesting a renewal, since it is important to leave the course shell as it was delivered, in the event that a student should challenge a grade. When your renewal request is submitted, the Bb system administrator will copy over the last instance of your course for the new shell, but without any of the student information. If you have special requests (such as deleting all discussion board postings), you may indicate that in the Comments box.

If you have any questions about this form, please contact us at bbsupport@lsv.uky.edu.

Request a new course shell or a course renewal by filling out the new combined online request form (opens in a new window).

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