Staff Guide: Personalise a Blackboard Ultra Course and Check Enrolments
These three quick set up guides are designed to take you through the essential steps to getting your Blackboard Course ready for teaching:
- Quick Set Up 1: Personalise your Course and check Enrolments.
- Quick Set Up 2: Plan the Layout and Add Content to your Course.
- Quick Set Up 3: Review Content and Engage with your Students.
- For more information on Assessment, see the Overview of Assessments eLearn guide.
This guide will take you through the steps to personalise your Blackboard course with staff enrolments and course images.
Find your course
Blackboard Courses linked to modules are automatically created on Blackboard. You can find them by logging onto Blackboard and selecting Courses. You will see a list of the courses that you are enrolled on.
If you cannot see a course, then you may not listed as teaching staff on the module in our systems. There are lots of ways to request access and staff can be manually added to a Blackboard course via the Class Register. You do not need to raise a Serviceline ticket to gain access.
How to request access to a course.
Check Your Role
Staff enrolled on a course as an instructor are visible to students under the Course Staff menu. All staff enrolled as an instructor will appear on the list with the “primary instructor” appearing at the top.
If you are the primary instructor and are not appearing at the top of the list, then go to the Class Register, select the three dots next to your name and Member Information. Under course settings, tick Primary instructor then select Save.
For more information, see our eLearn guide about the Class Register.
Enrol additional staff
Course staff with the instructor role are visible to students. Check this list is correct and change staff roles if students don’t need to see them.
From 25/26, the module lead will be enrolled from Worktribe and primary instructor (if different) from Banner when courses are provisioned. Other staff listed as teaching on the timetable will be enrolled at Teaching Assistants when the timetable in finalised.
Some staff can use Staff Enroller to self enrol onto Courses including Programme Leads, Auditing instructors, library staff and Learning Support Assistants.
To manual enrol additional staff, go to the Class Register, select the plus icon, search for and add additional staff with an appropriate role.
Students should not be enrolled manually onto a Blackboard course. Contact your A&A team for any questions about student enrolment.
To manually enrol, unenrol or edit the role of staff on a Blackboard course, see our eLearn guide on managing the Course Staff.
Review student information including Student Support Recommendations
Students will be enrolled on courses from Banner from 01 August.
There are a variety of tools to support you getting to know your students including the Class Register and Photo Roster. Using these tools you can view student photos, find their ID number and basic profile information, print and export class lists.
It’s important to familiarise yourself with any Student Support Recommendations so that you can support all students taking your module.
For more information about these tools, see our eLearn guide on Class Register and Photo Roster.
For more information about supporting students with additional requirements, see the Student Disability and Inclusion team sharepoint for staff.
Step 11 will explain how you can use Ally Report to make simple checks and changes to improve content accessibility for students.
Course Banner
Blackboard Courses are provisioned with a generic course banner image which we recommend you change to personalise your module with a relevant image. You can do this from your Course by selecting the pen icon on the Banner image or Edit display settings in the Details and Actions menu.
You can copy banners between courses:
- On the Course Content page, select the More options menu (three dots towards the top right of course content). Select Copy Items from the dropdown menu.
- Search for the course with the banner you wish to copy and select it.
- Select the Settings folder and then select the Banner.
- Select Start Copy, the banner will be applied to the course.
For a more detailed guide see Changing your Course Banner image.
You may also want to:
Merge Modules: Are you teaching the same content to different years or to undergraduates and postgraduates?
Create Student Groups: Are you teaching via seminar groups or planning group assignments?
Personalise your Blackboard Profile: Have you added a picture or a name pronounciation so students can get to know you?