There are many situations in which instructors may want to have a non-enrolled user given access to a current Blackboard course. In this article, we'll present three of the most assigned user roles in Blackboard and we'll describe how/when they may be used:
- Instructor: The official instructor(s) or record for a course will be
automatically added to its corresponding Blackboard shell in the role of
Instructor. Upon the request of the instructor-of-record, Chair, or
Dean/Associate Dean, the IDT team can add other instructors (if they have
completed UHCL's required online Blackboard training) to a course shell. Users
with the Instructor role have access to all of Blackboard's tools, functions,
and course data (including student grades).
- Teaching
Assistant: Faculty regularly request that we
grant specific students Teaching Assistant access to one or more of their
Blackboard shells. Teaching Assistant role users have access to nearly ALL the
same features, tools, and data as Instructor role users. For this reason, we
strongly recommend that Teaching Assistants complete UHCL's online Blackboard
training before being added to any shells. IMPORTANT! When such an
account exists, the IDT team will ALWAYS use a student's staff (UHCL\
domain) computer account to assign Teaching Assistant privileges. Doing so
clearly delineates work those students perform in Blackboard shells as a
student from that done as a Teaching Assistant.
- Student:
All officially enrolled students in
a course will be automatically added to their class's corresponding Blackboard
shell. However, there are also instances in which non-enrolled users may appear
in a Blackboard shell in the Student role:
- Teaching
Assistants in the College of Business (BUS): Per
instructions from BUS academic leadership, TAs for BUS courses may only be
granted Student role access to the courses in which they are assisting
instructors.
- Tutors/Embedded
Librarians\Supplemental Instructors: For
this category of assistants, faculty typically want them to be able to
communicate with students in the Blackboard course, but they often do not want
them to have access to student grade information. Therefore, the Student role
is the best fit for these situations.
- Students
with Incompletes: For students completing work to
resolve an Incomplete, faculty have the option of either reactivating the
student's access to the previous semester's Blackboard shell or having the
learner added to the current semester offering.
To request the addition of Teaching Assistants to your
Blackboard shells, we recommend that you use our team's online form, Request Adding TA(s) to Course(s). For all
other requests, please email the Support Center at SupportCenter@uhcl.edu.
Please include in your request the course information (including section
number), the name and UHCL email address of the person to be added, the role to
grant the user, a brief explanation of why they need access, and (if possible)
their UHCL employee/student number.
