Consistent and clear communication is directly correlated with student success. Regardless of the course level, students may have little or no background in higher education expectations or using Blackboard. Communication from a faculty member can mitigate that inexperience or confusion. Communication from student to faculty leads to even more clarity and better student experience.
To assist with this, Blackboard provides you with Announcements, Messages, and Class Conversations for communicating with students.
Announcements will be visible to all users for the duration of the course (unless availability settings are adjusted to prevent this), regardless of when someone enrolls or joins. Messages are only visible to the recipients chosen at the time of sending and are not made visible to students who join after the message was sent.
Depending on the sender’s choices and the recipient’s notification settings, Announcements and Messages will appear as alerts and notifications rapidly informing users of the information.
Note: most of these features require your course to be open (available).
Questions
If you have questions, please contact the Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning via email (Ask-CETL@udmercy.edu) or phone (313-578-0580).
Suggestions for Use
- One of the first things to do when a Blackboard course is open is to send an announcement informing all users of the availability of the course and syllabus.
- Faculty may use Announcements to notify students of upcoming assignments, clarify instructions, or communicate changes to the class schedule.
- An excellent way to keep students engaged, particularly in an online course, is to post a weekly Announcement that summarizes the previous week's activity ("In last week's discussion a few people brought up some interesting points ...") and sets expectations for the upcoming week ("Pay particular attention to ...").
- With Messages, users can contact each other to schedule study meetings, ask the instructor questions about content or clarify assignments, etc.
The Tools
Announcements:
- Announcements are an effective way to communicate with all your students via single message. This is particularly true of courses that require students visit Blackboard regularly. New announcements appear when a student first visits the course site, regardless of course style or when students enroll/join. Old announcements are collected on an Announcements page.
Messages:
- Bb Messages are intended to be used much like email, but the messages stay within Bb, so going to email is not necessary. Faculty can message one, a few, or all users in a course.
- Note: If you post a message to "everyone" and someone adds to your course later, they won't get that message. A message to "everyone" is a message to everyone enrolled in the course at that time.
Class Conversations:
- Class Conversations are an option that must be selected on a Document, Test, or Assignment settings page.
- Class Conversations allow all members of a course to post and view discussion-style messages related to a specific document, test, or assignment in an ultra-style course site. This tool essentially creates a discussion forum tied to that item which can be accessed from the item page.