Some Work Around Techniques You Should Know

Hiding Courses
You can hide courses you do not want shown on your My Blackboard screen. To do so:

1. Log into Blackboard and on the My Blackboard screen select the Edit Course List icon (looks like a pencil in the upper right corner of the Course List panel).
2. Find the course name (see note below) and click the Hide Link button that follows the name. If you want to hide several courses at once, select the checkbox that precedes each course name, scroll to the bottom of the screen and click the Hide button.
3. When finished, click the My Blackboard tab to refresh back to your My Blackboard screen.

Note: as you search for the course(s) you want to hide, you’ll see that the course names are truncated at about 30 characters. Move your mouse pointer over a title, let it rest there and you’ll see the entire course name displayed. For some additional notes about why your course listing may not be in alphabetical order, check out http://ce-annotations.blogspot.com/2007/05/when-my-blackboard-courses-are-not-in.html.

Grade Book Columns
By default every Grade Book in Blackboard includes two columns that cannot be deleted: Midterm and Final. So don’t waste energy trying to remove them.

Calendar Entries
You can create three types of calendar entries: Personal, Private and Public. Private calendar entries cannot be copied from one course to another. Personal and Public entries can be copied. If you want to make notes to yourself about activities you need to perform at specific times during each semester and you want to copy them to a new semester, make the entries Personal and not Private.

Once you copy content to a new course shell (including calendar entries) you can use the Manage Course --> Date Rollover feature to adjust calendar entries from the old dates (probably last semester’s dates if you’re copying content from the previous semester) to dates appropriate for this semester’s course. However, this feature only adjusts dates that are linked to assessments and assignments. It does not adjust dates that are used in selective release or stand alone dates in your Calendar.

By the way, the Date Rollover really works best if you first CLEAR all calendar entries except one semester’s worth, e.g. you only have last semester’s dates in the course shell when you rollover dates to the new semester. You do have an option to clear a range of dates from your Calendar (go to the Calendar tool, select the Delete a Range button and set the range you want to delete).

You can adjust those dates manually using the Adjust Individual Dates button, which is available once you select the Manage Course --> Date Rollover feature.

For additional “strange calendar behaviors” check out http://ce-annotations.blogspot.com/2007/08/strange-calendar-behaviors.html.