The Jewish Theological Seminary
Your Blackboard Course Site
When you and your students first enter the course site, what you see on your screen will look similar to the following image:
Note the following areas:
1: At the very top left corner of the page is the JTS logo. Clicking on this will take you to the JTS home page.
2: Directly underneath the logo is a white tab called My Jewish Theological Seminary Courses. Clicking on this tab will take you back to your main Blackboard page.
3: Underneath the tab, on the left side of the screen, is an image with a disk, a menu consisting of buttons, and a box titled Tools. When students navigate through the course site, they will almost always see this area on the left side of their screen.
a: Clicking on this image will open JTS's Instructional Technology home page. Visit this page for lots of helpful information and tutorials for using Blackboard.
b: The navigation items on the left-hand side of the screen are buttons and text links which students use to view various areas of the course. You may also use these buttons, but keep in mind that you have more options for viewing and editing your course, to be discussed later). Note that each course varies depending on the instructor's preferences, so your course may look different, or have different functionality in the navigation items. As a course's instructor, you have the option of changing the appearance of this area, such as the items that show up (to be discussed shortly) or the colors and shapes - information about this can be found in the "Extras" section of the manual.
c: The Tools box links you to Communications features, Course Tools, and a Course Map. In addition, you will see your course's Control Panel. Keep this link in mind - The Control Panel is where you will go to build and edit your course. Only you can see this link - this is the only difference between the student and instructor view of the course home page.
4: These are Internal Navigation links, also known as "breadcrumbs," and will appear at the top of each page within a course. Clicking on a title will take you to that area of the course: e.g., the course name will take you to the homepage of the course. Selecting the name of a content area (e.g., Chapter Material) will take you to the top level of that content area. Note: due to the dynamic nature of many of the pages within the course, it is strongly recommended that you use the internal navigation links instead of your browser's back and forward buttons.
5: Finally, notice that in the main area you are viewing the course Announcements. This is the default area shown whenever you go to your course's main page. (Notice how clicking the Announcements button in the left-hand menu doesn't change what you see.)
Click Next to learn about navigating in your course.