Design Course Content in Blackboard

Blackboard gives you a wide range of options for creating or uploading content or managing activities for your courses. For example, you can use your course as online storage to share course-related documents with your students or you can use it to build Web-based content to be read online, much like a Web site.  You can also use Blackboard's course tools to engage your students through online discussion or collaboration and to collect and grade student work. 

Most Blackboard courses use a combination of these features; but when you are starting out, it's better to focus on one and expand from there.  To determine the best fit for your course, think about the following:

Course Content vs. Course Tools

Will you use Blackboard mainly to share content (e.g., weekly readings, images, audio, video, Web-based articles, etc.) or to conduct course activities (e.g., student writing, tests or projects, discussions, etc.)?

• If you will use Blackboard primarily to share large amounts of information with your students, then Blackboard's content-building features may be the best option for you.

• If you will use Blackboard mainly to conduct and/or evaluate course activities you might find Blackboard's Course Tools to be more helpful. See Blackboard's Getting Started for Instructors page for more information about course tools.

For information on the layout and functionality of different areas within a Blackboard course shell, see Blackboard's Set Up Courses page.