University of Southern Maine

CTEL and H1N1

If you are concerned about H1N1 and how you might deal with your classes if you or a number of your students cannot attend classes, we have many tools to help you.

The first and easiest step is to start using Blackboard to post your syllabus, announcements, contact information, class e-mail, and any documents to which you want your class to have ready access. With an active and available site, you will have the ability to provide announcements and online materials for students who cannot make it to class, or to all students if YOU cannot make it.

A 3 minute tutorial on setting up a minimal site in Blackboard is now available. (see directions below)

Glenn LeBlanc's Blackboard Introduction (video)

To schedule a meeting with a CTEL Course Designer to discuss your alternatives, call David Vardeman at 780-4077.

Here is an example of a simplified Blackboard site. You will find instructions to accomplish this below.

To make your Blackboard Course Site available:

Requests are no longer necessary.  Sites are now created on the Blackboard server automatically for every course listed in MaineStreet.  Course sites are unavailable to students until you make them available. Once you make your course available, it will take about 24 hours for the student enrollments to populate. To do this, log in to Blackboard. Find your course listed and click on it, then look for the Control Panel in the left hand column.

Control Panel > Settings > Course Availability > Yes

Create a Minimal Site

Step one: Make your site available.

• Log into Blackboard
• Find and click on your course
• Go to Control Panel > Settings > Course Availability
• Set to Yes

Step two: Reduce and modify buttons and content areas.

Keep Announcements!

• Control Panel > Manage Course Menu > Click Remove to the right of each button you will not need in your Menu.
• Click Modify next to a content area button (such as Course Documents) select Syllabus from the drop down menu.
• Add a tool link for Email: Click +Tool Link, on the next screen click on the drop down menu next to Type: Address Book and select Email
• Click Submit at the bottom of the page.

Step three: Enter your contact information:

Control Panel > Staff Information > Enter information into form.

Step four: Post your syllabus

Control Panel > Syllabus > Add item
open your syllabus and copy and paste the text into the text box of Add item. This will allow your students to view the syllabus in the browser, inside Blackboard. You should also Link the syllabus document to your item (below the text box) which will allow students to download the syllabus to their own computers for printing.

For Blackboard Help

USM Helpdesk – 780-4029, helpdesk@usm.maine.edu
(request a username, login problems, other technical assistance)
The best FIRST call for any Blackboard question is the helpdesk.

Contacts (for course development assistance):
Scott Kimball
Instructional Media & Support Specialist – University College / CTEL
780-4238, scottk@maine.edu

Sue Goodrich
Instructional Technology Support Specialist
228-8001, goodrich@usm.maine.edu

Barbara Stebbins
Instructional Technologist
228-8598, Glickman Library, stebbins@usm.maine.edu