Blackboard Student Communication Tools

 

All of the following tools can be found in the Communication section of your Blackboard course.

Email

To send email within Blackboard, go to Communication à Send Email

Select one of the following:

Ø      All Users, All Instructors, or Select Users

Ø      Enter a Subject and Message

o       *Important* If you need a copy of the emails you send from Blackboard for recordkeeping purposes, send a copy of the message to yourself.

Ø      Add an Attachment (optional)

Ø      Click Submit

 

You will receive the email within your University of Hartford email Inbox.  You will have to leave Blackboard to check your messages.  You can check University of Hartford email at http://webmail.hartford.edu.

Messages

If your instructor has it enabled, Messages is a feature accessed from the Communication area that provides each course with a private and secure system for communication that functions similar to email.  Not all instructors use the Messages function, so you may want to check with your instructor before using this feature to send messages.  NOTE:  Messages cannot be sent to or received from users outside the course. 

Discussion Board

  1. Access the forum by clicking on the forum name.
  2. Read posts (messages) by clicking on the subject line of the post.
  3. You can reply using the Reply button in the right corner.
  4. If it’s an option, new threads (discussion topics) are started by clicking the Thread button on the upper left. 
  5. Click on the Subscribe button in a thread to have thread messages sent to you via email.

Roster

Use the search function to list the students in your course.

 

 

Group Pages

If your instructor is using groups, you can access your group using the Communication button and clicking on Group Pages.  Your group name will be underlined.  Only students assigned to a particular group may access the group pages for that group.  Each group will have one or more of the following communication tools: discussions, the Virtual Classroom (chat), File Exchange (Digital Dropbox), and e-mail. 

Collaboration

There are two options within this area: Virtual Classroom or Lightweight Chat. 

Virtual Classroom

The virtual classroom has a whiteboard for displaying items such as websites and course materials, a chat window at the bottom of the screen, and a navigation menu at the left. 

Lightweight Chat

The Lightweight Chat is a text-based chat tool that is simpler to use because it does not have the advanced functionality of the full Virtual Classroom. It allows a group of students to conduct an online session through text-based messages and is similar to Instant Messaging.

 

Accessing Archived Chat Sessions

Your instructor may record (archive) chat sessions that you can read at a later date if you miss a chat session.

 

To access an archived chat session, do the following:

  1. Go to the Control Panel
  2. Select “Collaboration”
  3. Within the list of collaboration sessions, locate the session with the recording you want to view (archives will be listed next to the session)

 

Accessing the Recording from a Collaboration Session

 

  1. Click onto the “Recordings” button to display the list of archives available for that particular collaboration session
  2. A list of all available archives will appear (see below)

 

Choosing a Recording

 

  1. Click onto the name of the archive.  The entire conversation will appear.