This one is for the students. The first tab of Blackboard is often just a slow page load that slows down getting to your courses. If you could do anything to that first tab, what would make it useful to you? What services would you want to see integrated? How should they work for you? What would it take to make Blackboard @ USF useful enough to be your homepage?
Leave you thoughts in the comments.
September 26th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Just leave it blank for fastest loading. We can load content on the myUSF tab.
September 26th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Not a bad idea. You can always remove most of the modules on that tab by clicking the red X in the upper right of each box. Only the Announcement module is mandatory, and that can even be minimized to reduce the load time.
Thanks,
Glen
September 29th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
I am a student at University of South Florida and I am unable to access Blackboard. Can you provide assistance or direct me to someone who can?
October 1st, 2007 at 9:53 am
Could you add an option to receive an announcement anytime a teacher changes something for their course.
October 2nd, 2007 at 6:31 pm
In response to your poll to the welcome page; I think it would be a given. Courses.
If nothing else, why not allow students and faculty to choose the tab that loads first?
October 2nd, 2007 at 6:37 pm
You can modify the modules and positions of those modules on the Welcome tab any way you want. In the upper right, click on Modify Content to add or remove modules from the tab. At last count there were more than 40 modules to choose from.
Also in the upper right, click Modify Layout to change the position and orderint of the modules on your page, along with the colors. Here you can add the courses module to the Welcome tab, and move it to the upper left position so it is most convenient to you.
Thanks, Glen
October 3rd, 2007 at 8:55 am
I would like to see some kind of cumulative gpa or grading module. That way we can have an idea of how were doing in our classes without searching through each course to see the current projected grade so far.
October 4th, 2007 at 10:39 am
I think that Blackboard should accept microsoft 2007 documents. It is really annoying to have to save documents as a 97-2003 document.
October 8th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
How about you guys revert back to the older class discussion boards. You have completely disreguarded the “If it isn’t broken, do not fix it rule” by giving us this current version. I cannot even access the message boards for my particular classes because instead of just having a standard message boards you have provided us with a search browser that doesn’t even search for what I’m looking for.
This current build is offensive to any user.
October 15th, 2007 at 10:22 am
GPA calculator
October 15th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
I just checked my e-mail recently and noticed that I have already reached half of my alloted memory. Is there any way to upgrade? I like to have all of my papers on hand in case of I need them. I would prefer to use USF’s e-mail, but I guess I can use my yahoo account as well.
October 30th, 2007 at 7:29 am
This comment is not directly related to your question above; but in my opinion, one of the biggest chanllenges with Blackboard and one of the reasons why students do not use it that much is that many professors do not use it or only use it partially. For example, I would check blackboard more often if I could see my grades, but many professors only post them at the end of the semester.
November 1st, 2007 at 1:05 pm
How about showing our email inbox on the Welcome Screen or a “New Mail” alert.
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:21 pm
I wish that new grades would be posted on the front page just like new comments from professors are posted. It would save alot of time when a person is curious if their grades have been updated.
November 4th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
It seems several of the issues posted can be taken care of by learning the system better and setting your preferences. As for ammendments to the system, I liked Jake’s post asking for a general grade tracking option on the front page. I also liked Maria Yepes post. I would definitely used blackboard more if professors utilized it throughout the course. Another feature that would be nice is to automatically recieve an e-mail everytime the professor submits a grade, makes a change or posts a message. It doesn’t even have to indicate exactly what was submited. Just a message that XYZ course has posted a new grade, message, etc.
November 7th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Like Ernest, I also wish that there was a way to know if I had new mail right when I first signed into Blackboard. And if the course selection came up first, as mentioned at the beginning of this comment session, that would be great also.
November 26th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
40,000 + students
16 responses
just do what you gotta do, i don’t think the general student population will complain too much if a drastic system upgrade is put into place
November 28th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
blackboard should integrate with oasis, the courses search, and the usf home page.
Ex. Just like how this blog page is viewable under the blackboard tabs above, those other usf pages should as well.
I am just tired of having to go through several windows like when I was registering for classes using OASIS, Blackboard, and the courses search in different windows.
December 2nd, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Did anyone else notice that if you use the news modules that the date for the news in always from August of 2002. If this module is there why doesn’t it update the date it retrieves the news.
December 2nd, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Derek,
Thanks for pointing that out. We’ve put that into Blackboard as a bug. While Blackboard takes a look at that issue, I’ve started adding some other news feeds to the system. So far there’s a module for USA Today and another for a couple Tampa Tribune feeds.
December 3rd, 2007 at 12:46 am
I would just like instructors that USE it.
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:20 pm
An overall change that could be made with myUSF and OASIS is the ability to search for classes when adding and scheduling without jumping around so much.
December 5th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
Course announcements, course docs, grades, and class email roster are needed on the first page; we waste too much time going from the first page, then to the announcements, then look for docs, then email addresses, then grades, when those are probably the most used items.
Many thanks for the poll; I hope some changes result.
December 5th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
You get an email notification whenever you get a grade for an assignment/test.
December 6th, 2007 at 2:13 am
I don’t get an email notification when grades are posted or when docs are put online.
December 11th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
I would like to see some sort of SafeAssign available for students to check their own work to ensure that everything that is quoted and paraphrased is included in the text. I believe this would free up time for instructors and increase the quality of work that is submitted by students.
December 17th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
I actually wouldn’t mind having a text sent to my cell phone when something is posted for a class. Of course, not all classes, but perhaps a class that I need to stay on top of. Teacher posts quiz tomorrow at 9pm for math, gets sent to cell phone, drop everything and study for it. Not bad
December 27th, 2007 at 11:23 am
I would actually like teachers to use Blackboard that would be helpful to me
December 29th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
You should be able to go straight to your course without having to click Courses and then the link.
Where it names the course and the announcements underneath, you just have to put a hyperlink so you can go straight to your class. Thank you.
January 6th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
It would be nice to include a search dialogue box to assist with navigation.
January 6th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
I find it time consuming to locate class schedule and class information. There has to be a much easier, more time-efficient way of looking class schedule and class information directly without going through several sites.
January 6th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
show us when we have NEW mail…instead of just having the mail thing there without knowing if there is anything new in there or not
January 7th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
I agree with showing whether or not we have new mail, and possible even how many new messages there are in our inbox.
The first page shoule be a quick snapshot of everything a student could want to look at, i.e. classes (w/ grades), teacher contacts, and SCHEDULE–sometimes you just need a quick reminder of where you’ll be and when. If the schedule was changeable by the user, that would be fantastic. Then we could include things like work, study group, meetings, etc.
January 7th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
There are definitely some good ideas here but I especially like the idea of integrating Blackboard and Oasis so we don’t have to go back and forth between so many windows.
January 7th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
- Let us be able to choose which tab loads first or get rid of tabs we don’t use.
- Allow external pages to load inside Blackboard.
- Integrate USF e-mail
January 14th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Our email needs to be more easily accessible. One would think that would be of primary concern. Negate the ads, such as the one for the weather channel on there now. Too much ’show’. We don’t need the pretty pictures of campus on there, or the other numerous decorative designs. Just not too user friendly. Quit worrying about the pretty designs, logos, and catchy phrases. Half the time it is hard to distuinguish between blackboard, myUSF, which one the professor means, or if they are the same thing. We want to be able to log in, easily obtain our email and class bulletins, and access the materials for our classes. Of course some other necessaities exist, but these are the most used and thus should be given more priority. Just quit trying to be cute, and be efficient for us.
January 15th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
It is always frustrating for me when a professor does not use Blackboard at all. It should be mandatory for all professors to use it, at the very least to post the syllabus so we don’t have to waste paper or try to keep track of it in paper form, and for posting grades. It is very important that we know not only what our grades are, but also that we can be sure that our professors have our grades recorded correctly. This leads to accountability for both the students and the professors.
January 16th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Blackboard is outdated. I charge you all to use the current models, including networking sites, to create a better mouse trap. Seriously, myspace is more user friendly than blackboard. And if nothing else, include our email access on it! Registrar intercommunication would also be huge.
January 16th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Hi Joe,
You make some interesting points, but can you be a bit more specific? In what ways is Blackboard outdated? Which models should USF adopt? A couple links to examples of both would be extremely helpful.
Thanks, Glen
January 29th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
1. Tab for courses (main reason why we log onto bb)
2. Left-hand navigation on welcome screen should have some of the more frequently used links, such as the direct OASIS link, etc. Perhaps some of the tabs should just become left-hand links, since a lot of them are not used that often (at least not by most students I know).
3. The design should be less angular, more user-friendly and instinctive. I keep thinking something that gives us new bulletins posted for classes (as it does already), followed by perhaps a link to the Oracle for USF news (link through a photograph relevant to current articles in the Oracle), the content collection should be integrated into the classes. I hear a lot of people complain about bb but they must use it regardless, so why not make it more pleasing to the eye and instinctive to use?
4. It’d be convenient to have the content collection for each class in the left hand navigation bar. Sometimes it’s frustrating when my content collections are a hodgepodge of different classes and semesters (and bb is frustrating enough). There’s probably a way to organize this, but to be honest I hate messing with bb organization because I usually screw something up.
5. USF libraries should be a link, not necessarily a tab. We want faster load time, let’s have the welcome tab, the myUSF tab integrated into the welcome tab, and the Courses tab. All other tabs we should be able to customize to what we want/use.
6. Can we merge mail with bb? If we could access mail (much like the msn page can alert you to hotmail messages, etc) it’d be great.
I’m not a computer programmer or anything, but if I could offer more help in designing a better look and more useful arrangement of things on bb, I would!
January 29th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
I liked Nitza’s suggestions.
February 7th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
I would like to see a link in each course for “My Grades” on the sidebar. Instead of having to go through “Course Tools” and then grades.
I know you can go to myUSF, but I like to be able to just click and see my grades if I’m already in the course website.
February 12th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Would it be possible for the little envelope icon that is above the space where you click to check your e-mail to be highlighted if there is new mail. I waste time checking for new messages and if this icon could be highlighted when new mail is received it would save everyone time.
Thanks.
February 20th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Current G.P.A instead of haviing to log onto oasis
February 20th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
I’m not really sure how much control your local staff has over the inner workings of Blackboard, so I don’t know if you’ll ever achieve a lot of the big changes people are asking for. Nevertheless let me go ahead and cite my main concerns.
1. Sessions: You know how you can now tell Facebook to “Remember me”, or how Yahoo mail and Gmail will keep you logged in for as long as you want if you tell it to? I use blackboard all the time from my own computer and I’m tired of repetitive logging in. For some reason my browsers won;t even store the username and password info. Please allow the option to let Blackboard remember me on my computer. To prevent abuse on public computers, if you want you can put in in a menu where we have to log in to set the option, or let the cookie destroy itself after Blackboard is not visited for a certain time.
2. User-friendliness: The frames, the coloring.. I can’t put my finger on it but using Blackboard feels old and clunky. This page that you are currently reading is better looking and feels modern. On Blackboard, links all look the same and are cramped together while I have plenty of unused space on the page because.. face it, who uses any modules on their welcome tab besides courses and maybe news and email?
3. Courses: This is why most students use Blackboard. Everything else on Blackboard is just links, while the only content you can’t access without Blackboard is your class information. Now I’m not sure why Nitza asks for a tab for courses since I already have one, but the fact is that tab is useless to me. The only thing of use is the module that lists the courses you’re enrolled in, which I’ve added to my welcome tab since.. that’s what we log into Blackboard for.
My suggestion is that we shouldn’t have to click into a course and search around to see what’s changed.. like others have said, once a teacher changes _anything_ in the course like your grade, or posts a document, then an announcement should be generated and visible on the front page. Most professors hardly ever post announcements on their own, so this would help. On the user friendly side, it would look much less cramped if each course had its own (useful) module so that it is easy to see which announcement goes with a class.
Access: Let’s face it, when we’re registering we know nothing about a class until we actually attend the first one. It would be good to have some kind of ‘guest’ access to past classes or classes we are not enrolled in, so we can view things like the syllabus, course documents, etc. but not to groups, grades, email, etc.
Research: Most of the tabs are never used by anyone I know, maybe because they’re a bunch of links and people don’t spend more time in blackboard than they need to. Extensive research/polling/surveys would help you to find out how most people use Blackboard, what is necessary to load in a tab, and what can be available as additional options. Back to the user-friendly stuff, let me have control over what links appear in my left-hand menu (maybe call it my personal user menu or something), and then let me have control over adding any tabs I might find necessary besides the Welcome Tab.
Integration: Many people ask for WebMail to be integrated. I never knew until I was tutoring a student that some people actually log in to Blackboard to click on the webmail link instead of just going to mail.usf.edu. Now I know that USF is about to switch over to Google Apps and Gmail, because I’m a tester. My question is not about forcing Gmail into a Blackboard frame, but about the Google Apps start page.. it would be seful if we don’t have that start page separate from our Blackboard start page, because each is less useful separate. I don’t know how you can address this. I hate frames, but that may be the only way to integrate Google Apps into Blackboard. If Blackboard is to be useful enough to become students’ home page, it has to be more dynamic than just linking to everything else we actually use.
Learning: I have no idea what Content Collection and all this other stuff is for. Please create good tutorials and make them obvious.
Thanks,
Craig
February 20th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
I just think that there are too many tabs…it would be nice if everything was on one or two tabs and maybe even customizable like the msn home page (for example we can hide the modules we do not use and incorporate more local (practical) type things like weather and news).
February 23rd, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Craig makes some good points. I do disagree with the stay logged in one though. Unless you can prevent it somehow on all but one PC, I think the inconvenience to some power users is acceptable weighed against the inconvenience because someone did something wrong in a lab. Has anyone explored the possibility of using the MAC address of the NIC card to facilitate this? Maybe that is overkill but it comes to mind as a unique ID from PC to PC.
I agree with Eric’s comment about “If it isn’t broken don’t fix it”. I think we need to be careful in defining what is broken. Use analysis of who your key users are both professors and students should be done and a user acceptance test to validate any upcoming changes. I’m sure that was done so maybe these polls could have reply comments from someone? Link over to the high level report of previous results?
Based on the answers above it looks like the system is working great and that students are just asking for fine tuning in regards to features. The requested changes are minor things when compared against the underlying goal of BB. I’d be interested in a directed survey to teachers and students that aren’t using BB. The common complaint of teachers not using it makes me wonder why? Can it be changed to work better for them or are they simply old school and will not buy into the technology? If the students are asking for it, maybe use for day to day grading needs to be mandated at the administrative level at some point if there aren’t valid complaints from this demographic.
Four to five years from now most of the teachers will be the same and virtually all of the students will have changed but at the end of the day, the students are the customers. If the common request is that teachers use it more frequently and better then some transparency into what is being done to improve faculty adoption of the application would be nice.
Come to think of it … a spellcheck button would be nice here and on any form… yeah, it’s a crutch. sue me.
February 24th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
As an online distance-learning student who is lives far away from Tampa, I would like to be able to set up online group studies with my fellow classmates. Many of my students are able to meet within a short distant of the Campus, but those of us who live hrs away simply feel left out and have a great disadvantage. Can you make that happen?
March 1st, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Link blackboard to USF webmail
March 2nd, 2008 at 9:48 pm
I want to correct myself–I went to modify content and modify layout…O.O…It has everything I asked for and more!!! Games…cameras in the library…etc! Hee, hee. Blackboard is PERFECT!…erm, I mean, its all right.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:29 am
I think it would be extremly practicle to be able to incorperate Blackboard and the mail system into one. I have taken too many courses where a classmate would email me something instead of forwarding into Blackboard. Blackboard is an all in one solution but with the integration of email it would be complete.
I have read some other responses and most seem to be upset about UI of Blackboard but I think Blackboard does not concentrate on the look and feel yet rather the functionality and flexibility of the utility.
October 26th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
I wish Blackboard had a calendar feature like the Angel system at SPC has. When an instructor posts an assignment with a due date it is automatically put on your calendar which can then be exported to Outlook. It is such a great feature. I used to export all of my assignments to Outlook and then export it to my cell phone so I got alerts whenever something was due. If Blackboard had this functionality I think it would be much more useful.
November 14th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
great post hope to see some additional comments here…
November 11th, 2009 at 4:03 am
thanks for this post! my blackboard has a problem again.