FAQs for Faculty

Q. What to do if I don’t have access to my Courses.
A. If you are going to be teaching in the 2011 Fall semester and currently don’t see your 11F course(s) on Blackboard, please check with the departmental course loader and make sure that you have been scheduled in Genesis. Please allow 24 hours for Blackboard to be updated after the new data is entered in Genesis. If your courses are not visible after 24 hours, please send an email to bbhelp@algonquincollege.com.

Q. What to do if my Continuing Education Courses don’t exist in Blackboard
A. If you are teaching a CE (evening) course and it is listed on your ACSIS timetable but not in Blackboard, please contact the departmental course loader and have the course tagged in Genesis. A new Blackboard shell for the course will be created the following morning.

Q. How do I get Coordinator Access to my Blackboard courses
A. If you are a coordinator and need access to your program courses, please send an email to Blackboard Support and let us know the course code and section number for all the courses (For instance: 11F_HOS2228_350). Please note that a written permission (e-mail) from your Chair or Dean is required.

Q. How to Make my Course Available
A.To make your course available to students, go to the “Control Panel” button of your course (click on the link to the course and then look on the left hand side for the “Control Panel” link, under the “Course Management” area), then click the “Customization” option and then “Properties”. Under option 3 (Set Availability), choose “Yes” for the “Make Course Available” and then “Submit”.

Q. How Do I Hide Previous Semester Courses?
A. After you login to Blackboard, go to the “My courses” module, on the “Home” tab and click on the circle icon on the right hand side of the module, on the title bar (it is called “Manage My Courses Module Settings”). In the next screen uncheck the boxes located under the “Display Course Menu” and “Display Announcements” columns for the courses you would like to hide. Click Submit. Please note that you can bring the hidden courses back any time you want.

Q. How do I Request Combined Courses?
A. If you are teaching two or more sections of the same course and would like to have your sections combined into one big course, please send an email to bbhelp@algonquincollege.com. Let us know the course code, section numbers, and also if you would like to keep the individual sections available. Please note that the combined courses will have only one Grade Center and the students from all sections will show up there in alphabetical order. The Grade Center Smart Views can be used to organize your students in sections. Please contact us (bbhelp@algonquincollege.com) and find out how to do it.

Q. How do I Export Content from Previous Courses and Import the Content into the Fall 2011 Version
A.

Q. How do I Import the Algonquin BB Course Template into my new Fall 2011 empty Blackboard shell
A. Your new semester courses include by default only the “Home Page” button. Rather than build your Blackboard course from scratch, it is now possible to import a Blackboard course template. You may choose to import a basic template that you can download from the address listed below or a more complex template, used and provided by your department.

  • Download the zip file for the “Algonquin College BB Course Template” from HERE.
  • Import the template into your empty BB 9.1 course from HERE.

Q. Which new Building Blocks are available?
A. Online Attendance: The “Online Attendance” tool allows instructors to track and mark attendance for a course (by date or by seating chart). Note: If the tool is not available by default, instructors can make it available from Control Panel/Customization/Tool Availability.

The “Paste from Word” mashup Tool: The new feature “Paste from Word” allows you to copy content from a Word Document into the Visual text box editor in Blackboard while removes/converts the code to standard-based HTML.