The My Blackboard Page

The My Blackboard page contains three main areas:

1. Logo Bar - A toolbar at the very top of the browser window, on the right-hand side, where you can change your password and other settings.
2. Channels - The main part of the My Blackboard screen is organized into Channels of information.
3. My Blackboard Toolbar - A toolbar just above the channels that contains links to customize the channels, and icons to access the Mail and Calendar tools.

The links on the Logo Bar depend on your location in Blackboard.

On the My Blackboard page, the Logo Bar has four links: 1) My Settings, 2) Check Browser, 3) Help, 4) Log Out.

1. My Profile – edit your profile or change your password
2. My Tool Options – set options for tools
3. My Roles – view all of your current enrollment information

On the My Profile tab you will see two buttons at the bottom of the screen: Edit Profile and Change Password.

• Edit Profile. Use this button to view your profile and to enter your correct email address.
  
  
  
• Change Password. Use this option to change your password and to enter a secret question and answer. The secret question and answer allow you to have a new password emailed to you, if you forget your current one.

The main part of the My Blackboard screen consists of links to different types of information, called channels.

Course List channel

This channel lists all of your courses. To enter a course, click on the title of the course.

To go to a different course, you must first return to the My Blackboard page. (Click on the My Blackboard link in the Logo Bar inside the course.) Then click on the title of that course.

If there is new activity in a course, you will see a small icon representing the location of that new activity or content, just beneath the course title.

You can modify the display of the Course List by clicking on the Edit Course List icon on the right side of the Course List heading.

Who's Online channel

This channel displays the number of students who are currently logged in to Blackboard in each of your courses.

You can send an invitation for a real-time, one-to-one chat session to one of the other students who are currently online.

1. Click the title of a course, to see which students in that course are are currently logged in to Blackboard.
2. The Who's Online screen will open, showing who is online and whether they are available for chat.
3. Select the person you want to chat with, using the checkbox to the left of the name.
4. Click the Send Chat Invitation button at the bottom of the screen.
5. When the chat invitation screen opens, you can enter text to be displayed with the chat invitation, or simply send it.

To change your Availability Status for chat:

1. On the My Status drop-down list, select one of the following:
   • Visible/Available
   • Visible/Unavailable
   • Invisible
2. Click Update.

To return to the My Blackboard page, click the My Blackboard tab.

Other channels on My Blackboard include:

• Campus Bookmarks
• Campus Announcements
• Personal Bookmarks
• To Do List
• My Grades
• Calendar Week and Calendar Day
• External Courses

To view the options for each channel, click the Action Links icon in the channel heading.

• Channels – You can select which chanels you want to appear on My Blackboard..
• Color – You can customize color combinations for Blckboard. You can also select a pre-defined color schemes, including a high-contrast scheme.
• Layout – You can specify where each channel will appear on the page.
• Mail icon – You can access the Mail for each of your courses.
• Calendar icon –Opens the global Calendar in the Month view. It contains the Calendar entries for all of your courses together.

Blackboard uses Tabs for top-level navigation. The My Blackboard page has two navigation tabs:

1. My Blackboard
2. Content Manager

Clicking on a tab takes you to that area.

The Content Manager allows you to access My Files, where you can store your personal files for your courses. My Files is private and cannot be accessed by other users.

Options in My Files include:

• Create Files – You can create and save files in Blackboard. On the Create File screen, you can also click on Enable HTML Creator, which allows you to create an HTML file (web page) and provides tools for formatting text, adding images, creating links to other files, etc. See Creating and Editing HTML Files in Blackboard.
• Get Files – You can upload files from your computer.
• Create Folder – You can organize your files in folders.