Blackboard

Filing. I know. Snoozefest right? But getting to know the Files area on your Blackboard modules can be incredibly useful. Bear with me.

Locating the Files Area

The files area can be found in the side menu under Course Management. Click on Files and then on the module code (TEST2_BRIA1 in the image below).

This will take you into the files area, which shows all uploaded documents and folders in a list. By clicking on any of the headings you can sort files by this criteria. Clicking once will sort in ascending order. Clicking twice will sort by descending order. This function is particularly useful for viewing all files of a certain type (e.g. identifying all of the PowerPoint files), or for locating the most recently edited or largest documents.

Removing Unwanted Files

Each Blackboard course area is set up with a standard 500MB of storage space. It is a good idea to regularly audit the files stored on your course areas.

If you copy content over from year to year, you may end up storing files that you no longer need. You may be storing several older versions of the same document. You may even want to remove a particularly large file that is using up a lot of space and replace it with a compressed version.

This is a two step process however. First you need to remove the file from the relevant course area. If you do this, it will still remain stored on the module, taking up valuable space.

To remove files completely, you need to go to the Files area, select the unwanted files using the tick boxes and click Delete. Once you have confirmed the deletion, the file will be totally removed from the module.

Be sure to perform both steps, as removing documents only from the files area will result in a broken link remaining in the content area.

Downloading Files

Often staff need to download some or all of the files from a Blackboard module. Luckily this is a simple thing to do.

1. Go to the course files area
2. Select the files that you require. Alternatively you can select all files by clicking the tickbox next to \’File Type\’.
3. Select \’Download Package\’. This will download the files as a zipped folder.

From this area it is also possible to copy or move files, however, this is best to do from the content area. We will show you how to do this in our next post.

If you have any questions, please contact us at TEL@worc.ac.uk

We are pleased to announce that Blackboard, the University’s Virtual Learning Environment is moving to a managed hosting Software as a Service (SaaS) deployment method this August. 

There are many benefits to making this change including:

• A reliable, scalable and robust infrastructure
• Improved performance, giving a better user experience.
• Zero or minimal downtime including scheduled maintenance and annual upgrades
• Ability to deliver continuous updates including new features or enhancements
• Quicker resolution of any technical issues, bug fixes, etc.
• Access to facilitate new integrations

These changes will not affect the end user experience and you don’t need to do anything with your modules and organisations – these will all be transferred centrally, however there will be a period of downtime from 8pm on Friday 9^th August until midday on Monday 12^th August while the transition is carried out.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. If you have any issues or questions with regard to this please contact tel@worc.ac.uk.

Website: www.uwtel.co.uk | Twitter: @UW_TEL