Quick guide to e-learn.sdu.dk (Blackboard) for students You can gain acces to e-learn.sdu.dk (Blackboard) via single sign-on, sso.sdu.dk/, Or this adress: e-learn.sdu.dk/. When you have logged on you will find yourself in the Course-area. Courses, My Page and Content System are the three main areas on Blackboard. Furthermore you will under the Help-tab, find guides for the different functions on Blackboard. You can gain acces to Email, Self-service and the Library on the other tabs. You navigate by clicking the tabs on top: This guide s purpose is to give a short introduction to each of these main areas and to give you knowledge on how to use e-learn.sdu.dk COURSES Under Courses you will find: Velkommen til din e-læringsplatform på SDU. Here you will find general info about e-learning for students. System status & Known Issues tells you about the status on the system or if there are general errors on the system that you have to be aware of. Information from IT-service : This is where IT-service will inform about important service information. Course Search : Here you can search for courses Course Catalogue : Here you can look for courses. My Courses : This is a list over your courses. My Announcements : Here you will find important announcements from your teachers. It can be about cancelled/moved lessons, extra reading for lessons and the like. My Organisations : Here is a list over organisations that you are connected to. Course List : Here you can see who is teaching your courses.
MY COURSES Every course has a Blackboard-area. You get into this by clicking the course name under Courses. The different areas in the course are accessed by the left-side menu: Notice, that not all faculties and all courses are using this structure or these names. Therefore your course areas might differ from the above. The menu works like this: Home Page: Sends you back to the page that has been selected as a homepage for the current course. Announcements: Here you will find all announcements your teacher, or some other form of administrator has published. Assignments: Here you will typically find assignments and hand-ins. Course Materials (not in picture): Here you will find information regarding the course. Ie. Syllabus and Curriculum. Discussion Board: The discussion board of the course Groups: Here you will be able to create and arrange groups. Tools the most important ones - Address Book: Here you can store and add all the contact info of your friends or co-workers. Add a contact by clicking Add Contact. - Calendar: This contains all your personal meeting or meetings scheduled by you teachers. - Course Portfolios: This place contains portfolios that have been created on the course. - Wikis: The team can in cooperation develop af wiki on the course. - Glossary: Here your teacher will be able to put up important terms. - Homepage: Here you can make your own webpage with text, pictures and external links. My Grades: See your grades, if they have been given on Blackboard. - Tasks: A list of your tasks. - SDU Assignment: This contains a list over assignments in this particular system.
Frontpage My Announcements: A liste over earlier published announcements in a compact title format. My Tasks: A list over your tasks. What s New: A quick overview on what happened on this course. Needs attention: Things that need your attention. My Calendar: See calendar events that your teacher has put in. To Do: This is a todo-list. Alerts: An overview of alerts in the system, typically for assignments or tasks. ORGANISATIONS Blackboards Organisation System is a module where every user has the opportunity to get their own Blackboard area, that is not a course on Syddansk University. An organization is a group of persons from SDU that coorporates about something academic or professional, or something that absolutely is not. It could be interdisciplinary workgroups, studygroups, party-organisations or alike. You will find this in a submenu under the Course-tab. If you wish to order an organization please fill out the order-form under About Organisations with the following information: - Organisation-title. - Full name of the responsible person - The responsible persons SDU-emailadress and E-learn username. - A short description the organisations purpose. On the Organisations page you will find: 1. A box ( My Organisations ) with a list over the organisations that you are currently in. 2. The box About Organisations is the place where you will find information about the use of organisations on e-learn.sdu.dk 3. The box Organisation Catalog, is a list over all existing organisations at SDU. MY PAGE My page is your personal are on Blackboard. Here you will find all the functions that have personal attachment to you as user: As you can see on My Page, there is direct acces to your SDUmail, Self-service etc. - My Page gives you an overview over your personally chosen modules - What s New gives you a quick view of new things on your courses etc. - Software sends you to a page where you can download faculty software. - SDUmail is your webmail. - Self-Service is a place where you can enroll and cancel courses and exams. (should a course be missing, please contact the Exam Office). - Adobe Connect is a login-site where you can use Adobe Connect. - Jobbank is SDU s page with job offers.
You control the layout and content on My Page. You can administer the content by clicking on the green Add Module -button and choose a layout by dragging around the boxes where you want them. Overview Navigate between the three different main areas by clicking on the tabs. When you move around in a course a submenu will appear: Here you can follow where in the structure you are, and go back in your process, because the title of the line works as links. CONTENT SYSTEM Blackboards Content System is to be viewed as an online harddrive, where you can save all materials. On the content-system tab, there is a menu in the upper-left side, with a couple of important features: A My Content -del (your personal space), evt. a Course Content -del (space reserved for courses you will only have diskspace on courses on rare occasions) and evt. a Organisation Content (space reserved for your assigned organisations). Adding folders and documents When youre creating folders or files, you have to use the green buttons: The Upload -button has 2 downward arrows on the button. This indicates that it will show a submenu when you hover the mouse over it.
Creating a folder: You can create a folder by clikcing on Create Folder. In the submenu that will show it is only necessary to fill out Folder Name and thereafter click on Submit. Remember to give the folder an appropriate name it will be easier to remember later when navigating around. Adding a document: A file is added (in that folder where you are loacted) by clicking on Upload Files in the submenu. In the top-right corner you have to choose whereas you want to upload a single or multiple files: On the next screen click on Browse, find the file you wish to copy to the Content System, select it, and click on Åben/Open. On the Blackboard screen click Submit. If you have to add multiple files or an entire folder, you can under Multiple Files drag the files into the window and upload them all at once. You can link from a course (ie. From Course Documents) to the files you have uploaded in the Content System. Look below under Add files or folders from Blackboards Content System to an organisation. Add files or folders from Blackboards Content System to an organisation When youre adding a file or a folder from Content System to an organisation, you are not uploading the file, but linking from the organisation to the document, or to the folder in the Contet system. This means that you can use the same files in several places without having to have multiple copies of it. You simply do not have to maintain the content in more than one place. When you are linking from an organisation, go to it via the Organisations-tab under Courses. Now you have to choose in which area the content is going to be placed. Ie. Documents. Before you can edit the content, you have to set Edit Mode to ON in the upper-right corner:
In the toolbar (the green buttons) choose Item under Build Content. Choose a name in the Name -field and eventually a description in the Text -field. Click on Browse Course Files in the 2. Attachments -area to look for the file or folder in the Content System. Selece the file or the folder and click Submit. A textbox will appear with a warning about the visibility for the enrolled students in the course. Click on OK.
You can make a link-name by Link Title if you want the students to click on a text-string when they are opening the file. After this, click on Submit and followingly on OK. My Places Under My Places that is placed at the top of your browser window you can edit some settings that are relevant for the way you view and use Blackboard. You can f.ex. edit the text size or the contrast, to lessen a possible eyestrain. If you need to change your password this is also the place to look it can be done if you click Personal Information and Change Password. If you want to edit how and which messages you get from Blackboard, look under Edit Notification Settings Help-pane This is the place you look for help. It contains almost every guide possible that you may have a need for as a student. Further guides We have created a Youtube channel, which contains further guides for students. It is right here: http://www.youtube.com/user/studentelearnsdu If you have any questions, comments or problems concerning this guide, please send an email to elearn@sdu.dk, and we will get back to you within 3 workdays. Updated and translated on 13-09-2012, dlund@sdu.dk