Printing from a SoftChalk-created Learning Module Page

Faculty members using SoftChalk to create Learning Modules for use in Blackboard have found that when the student uses the Blackboard Learning Module Print function, the top of each printed page repeats the table of contents (TOC). Here’s the response from SoftChalk regarding this problem.

"What is happening is that when you print a page using the WebCT/Blackboard print function, Blackboard is just grabbing the "text" of the html page. When you created your lesson pages, you included the page navigation at the top of the page and the "drop-down" Table of Contents link in the sidebar. Normally when the student views the page, this information is formatted as the navigation bar across the top of the page and also as the drop-down TOC link in the sidebar. The navigation bar displays as it does because of the CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) that is "behind-the-scenes". But when WebCT/Blackboard displays the page for printing, it doesn't reference the CSS, so all of the text for the navigation bar and the TOC sidebar link appear as a list of items at the top of each printed page.

"You could easily get rid of the TOC appearing on the printed page by just removing the TOC drop-down link in the sidebar of your lesson. You will have to decide if it is more important to have the TOC as a drop-down link in the sidebar, or have the TOC info print when the student uses the Blackboard print function.

"In our next version of LessonBuilder, we plan to include a new "print all pages" option that will appear on each lesson page. Then, your student could click that link and it would print all of the lesson pages with the correct formatting. But until then, I would suggest that you might want to remove the sidebar TOC drop-down menu."