FAQs

Recurring virtual office hours can be scheduled using Blackboard Collaborate as follows.

1. From any one of your Blackboard courses, select the “Blackboard Collaborate Ultra” link under the “Control Panel” menu in “Course Management”.

2. From the “Blackboard Collaborate Ultra” page, click the “Create Session” button. The “New Session” panel will appear on the right.

3. From the “New Session” panel, enter the name that you would like to call your office hours (e.g., “Office Hours”), select the “Guest access” checkbox (so students from your other classes can join the session), enter the start and end date and time of your first session, and click the “Repeat session” checkbox. The “Repeat session” section will expand.

4. In the “Repeat session” section, select how often and the days of the week that your office hours will occur, enter the date your office hours will end, and click the “Create” button.

5. Upon clicking the “Create” button, a “Guest link” will appear under the event details. Click the “Copy” button, then press Control + c to copy the link.

6. From each Blackboard course for which you would like to post office hours, click the “Add Menu Item” (+) button above the course name on the left side menu and select “Web Link”. The “Add Web Link” dialog will appear.

7. From the “Add Web Link” dialog, enter the name of your office hours in the “Name” field, press Control + p in the “URL” field to paste the URL that was copied from the event details in step 5, check the “Available to Users” checkbox, and click the “Submit” button.

8. The office hours link will now appear in the left side menu for students to click on and enter.

When creating a Collaborate session, select “Guest access” in the settings. This allows anyone to join the session that is not currently in the class. It will then provide a link that you can email to your class or post in a section within Blackboard for all your classes.

Cengage provides the Blackboard Test Bank with the instructor resources.  

1. If you use MindTap, you can find this in the dashboard under “Instructor Companion Site”:

2. In the Instructor Companion Site, click “Test Banks” and then download the Blackboard Test Bank Files:

3. Unzip the file.   You will then see zip files for each chapter that can now be loaded into Blackboard:

4. In Blackboard, click on the “Tests, Surveys, and Pools” option under “Course Tools”:

5. In the “Test, Surveys, and Pools” page, click on “Pools”:

6. On the “Pools” page, click “Import Pool”:

7. From the “Pool Import Page”, click “Browse My Computer”, select the zip file of the chapter you would like to import, then click “Open”:

8. Click the “Submit” button:

You should then see the imported Test Bank in the list of pools:

You can now use this test bank in your Blackboard Tests.

The link that the students can use to download the Respondus browser is as follows:

https://www.respondus.com/lockdown/download.php?id=513954030

1. From your quiz in Blackboard, select “Edit the Test Options” from the drop-down menu. The “Test Options” page will appear.

2. From the “Test Options” page, scroll down to the section titled “TEST AVAILABILITY EXCEPTIONS” and click the “Add User or Group” button. The “Add User or Group” dialog will appear.

3. From the “Add User or Group” dialog, click the checkbox next to the student for which the additional time was requested and click the “Submit” button.

4. The selected student will now appear under the “TEST AVAILABILITY EXCEPTIONS” section. You can now adjust the number of minutes in the TIMER textbox. Then click the “Submit” button at the bottom of the page.

For a more detailed explanation, please refer to the following guide and video posted by Stetson Academic Success:

https://www.stetson.edu/administration/accessibility/media/Blackboard%20Accommodated%20Testing%20Guide.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzQGdECPGdc

1. From your Blackboard course, click the “Add Menu Item” (+) button above the course name on the left side menu and select “Web Link”. The “Add Web Link” dialog will appear.

2. From the “Add Web Link” dialog, enter the name of the web link in the “Name” field (e.g., “Respondus Lockdown Browser”, enter the URL https://www.respondus.com/lockdown/download.php?id=513954030 in the “URL” field, check the “Available to Users” checkbox, and click the “Submit” button.

1. From “Course Tools”, click on “Tests, Surveys, and Pools”.

 

While students cannot use the Microsoft Excel application, they can still work with an Excel spreadsheet using Respondus’ own spreadsheet application which includes all the basic features of Excel. 

To allow students to work with an Excel spreadsheet using Respondus:

1. Post the Excel file that you would like your students to use during the test. If you would like them to work from a new file, you will still need to post a blank workbook for the students to use.  To post an Excel file, go to the same content area that contains the test and select Build Content->File.

2. On the “Create File” page, enter the name of the link that will open the Excel file, then click the “Browse Local Files” button.

3. Navigate to the Excel file that you would like to use for the test, then click “Open”.

4. Under “Standard Options”, it is recommended to select “No” for “Permit Users to View this Content” if you would like for students to only access this file from the test. Then click the “Submit” button.

5. From the test content page, right-click the link to the Excel file that was just created and select “Copy link”. This will copy the link URL to the clipboard.

6. From the test content page, click the arrow to the right of the test to which you would like to post the Excel file and select “Edit the Test”.

7. On the “Test Canvas” page, click the arrow to the right of the test name and select “Edit”.

8. On the “Test Information” page under “Instructions”, type instructions on how to access the file.

9. Click and drag the text that was just entered, then click the “Insert/edit link” button.

10. From the “Insert/edit” link dialog, press ctrl+c on the keyboard in the Url textbox to paste the Excel file link URL that was copied in step 5 (if the URL does not look similar to the one in the illustration, the perform step 5 again). Then select “New Window” from the “Open Link In…” dropdown and click the “Save” button.

11. Click the “Submit” button from the “Test Information” page.

12. If you haven’t already, activate the Respondus Lockdown Browser for this test and include blackboard.stetson.edu as a required web domain. From Respondus, students will see the link to the Excel file in the test instructions.

13. Upon clicking the link, the Respondus spreadsheet application will open the file in a new tab.