Blackboard Practices
For the purposes of this practice, the term "semesters" includes Fall, Spring, and Summer.
Course retention
Courses will be maintained in the Blackboard system for 5 semesters plus the current semester. Older course shells falling outside of the 5 + 1 (+1 = current semester) retention window will be removed after the conclusion of a semester. Faculty are encouraged to download copies of course shells at the end of each semester to ensure the availability of that version for future use. No backups or copies of courses will be retained by ITS. Visit this ITS KnowledgeBase article for additional information about 5+1, including best practices and instructions on how to export course shells.
Enrollment into classes
If the student is enrolled in the course through the registrar, the student will be added automatically within 24 hours of their completed registration.
Additional students, Teaching Assistants, Graduate Assistants or Instructors may be added to a Blackboard course with written permission from the faculty member responsible for the Blackboard course. The faculty member giving permission must also state what level of access the person should have within the Blackboard course. Use the Add/Remove User request form to request additional users be added.
Special additions can also be made such as: incompletes, course audits, independent study, or observers. In each of these instances, written faculty permission is required and the users are added to the Blackboard course with student status.
Users without SIUE e-IDs can also be added to Blackboard courses. Written permission from the faculty member responsible for the Blackboard course is required. The faculty member must request an affiliate account from [email protected] and act as the sponsor for that account. Once the special account is secured, the faculty member must notify the Blackboard administrator of the special account information. The account information is added to Blackboard and the user is enrolled in the course.
Educard users are also added to Blackboard courses. The user must have either an SIUE e-ID or a special account requested from [email protected]. The Educard user's e- ID information or special account information is added to Blackboard and the user is enrolled in the course
Removing users from a course
Removals (drops) are done following the academic calendar. Students who have dropped a course will be removed from the course according to the Registrar's calendar. If you find a user has not been removed after a drop, please email [email protected].
Using publisher content
Although ITS can assist faculty with the implementation of publisher content in Blackboard, many third-party software vendors ask that institutions do not attempt to provide technical support for their products. As a result, ITS is unable to provide technical support for problems that occur with publisher content. Visit the Using Publisher Content page to find resources for products such as WebAssign, Pearson's MyMathLab, Cengage NOW, and others.
Course quotas
Blackboard courses have a 2 GB limit. To avoid avoid running out of space, ITS recommends storing larger files, especially video and audio files, outside of Blackboard and linking to them in the course. Videos can be streamed from other locations, such as YuJa (videos) or Microsoft OneDrive (PowerPoints or other large files) where students can access them. OneDrive is also a good alternative for large multimedia files (anything over 100 MB).
