1.1 Setting up the Blackboard Home Page (3m32s)

Person 1 (00:00):
Setting up the Blackboard homepage. Log in to Blackboard and meet the Blackboard homepage. At the very top of the page, on the left, is the blue CUNY Blackboard banner with several menu items starting with Home, Help, etc. And in the top right hand corner of this banner, to the left of the logout button, is an avatar, your name, and an arrow action button. Click on this arrow action button to open the Global Nav igation menu. Next, click on the Course and/or Organization tabs to find links to your courses and to your organizations. Next, go to the bottom of the Global Navigation menu and click on the Tools tab. You may find the Announcements and Tasks links useful later on. For now, click on the Update Email link to make sure that Blackboard uses the valid CUNY email address you want it to use. Update it if needed and click on Submit. Otherwise, click on Cancel. Back on the homepage, in the banner on the right, click again on the arrow action button next to your name. Now, go down and click on the Settings tab. It is unlikely that you will want to change your computer's display text size or high contrast settings via Blackboard. So click on the Personal Information tab. Make sure to click on the question mark in the right corner under the blue CUNY banner to show Help. We recommend in particular that you visit the Personalize My Settings link on the Personal Info page to change the generic avatar next to your name with a nice photo of yourself or, if you prefer, with another avatar of your liking. Doing so will make your photo or personal avatar appear to your students in the blog, the discussion board and the wiki. You'll learn to set these up later. Go ahead and once again, when finished, click on Submit. To manage how frequently you get Blackboard course updates in your mailbox, in the Global Navigation menu, click once again on Settings, next, on Edit Notification Settings, then on Edit General Settings. When all is set up to your liking, click on Submit. Now look at the page and the different modules it displays by default. If you really want to learn what other modules you can add to the required default ones, click on the Add Module button in the dark grey action bar under the blue CUNY banner. But we suggest that for this page, less is more. The modules displayed by default cannot be removed. To wit, hover your mouse over the top right corner inside the CUNYFirst MyInfo module to see the forbidden action icon pop up. What you can do is give the page a cleaner look by collapsing some modules. We're allowed. Do so for all, except the My Courses and My Organizations. Just click on the little triangle button to the left of the module's name. Next, to change the layout of the modules, in the action bar on the far right, click on the bi-directional reordering arrow icon. Happy reordering! Lastly, in the action bar again, click on the Personalize Page action button. Then on the little plus icon to the left of the color palette library to select a color theme other than the default one. Do not forget to click Submit. Click Submit! Thank you.