Do any of you Uni lecturers out there use Blackboard?

[Medea]

Just got hired to teach a module and taught my first class last week. A student asked if I'll use Blackboard to post the essential points from each class for the benefit of absentees.

When I looked at her blankly, she said asked, 'Do you know what blackboard is?' and of course I didn't...oh god I feel so old.

Anyway I've figured out how to get on to blackboard, and I noticed there's a feature called "Announcements". Do I use the Announcement feature to say "Here are some main points from Lesson 1" and then upload a word document with the contents? Or is there a more direct way to do it without having to upload a document.

I'm sure each school has a different system, but I assume Blackboard works pretty much the same from school to school, no?

I can ring the head of the dept tomorrow, but would rather not come across as too useless. Anyone have any tips?

Hello fellow woman of Greek myth!

Contact the IT department, or the Staff Education & Development department: they will be able to help you - there will probably be tutorials you can go to. In my experience, they are always super-keen to educate the technologically illiterate! The Head of Dept. will only direct you to them anyway.

Don't be embarrassed - you are not alone. We are diving fully into the VLE thing from next year, and I'm missing all the training, etc., this year as I'm on maternity leave: I'll have to catch up and put my courses up over the summer (oh joy).

We'll get there in the end. [old gimmer emoticon]

I use it but we have an IT guy who does most of it, you let him know and he changes things on it - I send him documents and he uploads.

I have used the Announcement for a change of room sort of message.

But really, it's up to absentees to borrow someone else's lecture notes (old fashioned emoticon).

LOL at you both! Penthesileia is a obscure woman of Greek myth, no?...I'd forgotten she was an Amazon: just looked her up. Medea was obvious one for me: the only mother I can think of who's worse than me! I tried contacting the IT dept but they never pick up the phone...so annoying. It's too late to ring again now, but I guess I'll try again tomorrow.