Blackboard Tutorial:
Navigation

The Home icon will take you to the Mansfield University homepage; the Help link will launch the official Blackboard Support Center, which provides access to an online Knowledge Base consisting of helpful tips and information related to the Blackboard experience; and Logout will end your class session in Blackboard.

Each day you log in to your course check the announcements area for news and class notes not otherwise posted in the syllabus or assignments. Faculty often use announcements instead of email.

The Syllabus provides an overall orientation to the course. Here you will review course goals and objectives, grading policies, contact information for your instructor, etc. Some courses may provide a separate Readings button that lists all required and recommended books, articles and web sites.

Here you will find your instructor's class notes and other background materials, usually arranged by module or week.

Optionally, your instructor might post supporting documents and study materials for individual assignments here.

This is where you'll find graded activities, arranged in folders by module. Besides instructions and rubrics, you will find here the all important link marked >>View/Complete Assignment from which to submit the assignment to your instructor. Unless told otherwise, written assignments are submitted here, not via email.

The Discussion Board contains individual Forum discussions used throughout each course (some more than others). Discussions are interactive activities in which you share ideas and experiences with the class. In some modules or courses your instructor might divide the class into groups, in which case you might interact with a smaller group of classmates.

This area provides useful links to web resources related both to your course and the SL&IT program in general (e.g. links to the Portal page, Student Handbook, MU Library, etc.).

Click on My Grades to quickly access the grade book where you can view not only grades for each assignment, but instructor comments (in most cases instructors will provide feedback here, not send it via email).

This group of buttons provides access to special tools to help with communications and course management. Though your instructor might remove some of the options from the menu, at the least you will have tools for sending email, working with groups (teams), viewing the class roster, and checking your grades and course progress (My Grades).