Contributed by Izaak Diefenbach, Instructional Designer I (COE)
Today, I will look at a part of the Blackboard Course Management menu that many of you may not even know is there. The Course Management menu is the lower half of the Blackboard Course Menu, the dark gray area on the left side of your Blackboard course. The Course Menu is only visible to instructors and includes commonly used sub-menus like Course Tools, Users and Groups, and Grade Center. Below those sub-menus, however, is one called Customization, and within that sub-menu is another sub-menu called Teaching Style.
The Teaching Style sub-menu contains four tools that can help you organize and build your course to reflect your teaching style and help make it your own. The first tool is Select Course Structure. The Select Course Structure tool allows you to choose a basic organizational structure for your course based on five focus areas. The five focus areas are Activity, Communication, Content, Systems, and Time. Each focus area provides several different menu organization options that will create a basic menu structure and a selection of content areas and tools designed to reflect a specific teaching style. For example, the Focus on Activity section features options such as Case Study, Constructivism, and Experiential learning, while the Focus on Communication section features choices such as Cooperative Learning and Guided Discussion. If you are not sure which one you might want to choose, you can click on any of the options to get a description and preview of the menu style. If you find one you like, click the Use This Structure button to organize your course in that style. IMPORTANT! If you apply a new Teaching Style (Course Structure) to a course with an existing menu structure, you can only restore the menu to its previous design by manually deleting each of the new menu items added when you applied the new Teaching Style.
For more information about the Teaching Style (Course Structures) option, please refer to either of the following resources:
The second tool is Select Course Entry Point. This tool allows you to select the first page users will see when they open the course. All you have to do is click the drop-down menu and select the page you would like to use for your entry point.
The third tool is Default Content View. This tool allows you to decide whether you would like each content item or area in your course to be represented by just an icon for the type of content, such as a file folder for a Content Folder or a file page for an individual Content Item, just the text title you gave the item or area, or both an icon and the text title. Blackboard automatically defaults to both, but you can change if you prefer. There is also a checkbox that will also allow you to apply the change to all of the existing content in the course.
The last tool is Select Banner. This tool allows you to select an image to serve as a banner at the top of the course’s Entry Point. You can choose any image you have saved to your local files, but Blackboard recommends a size of approximately 480 x 80 pixels to avoid cropping the image in some browser windows. The tool also allows you to add alt text to your banner image for accessibility.
Finally, don’t worry if you change your mind about any of these options. There is still a Cancel button in the bottom right corner of the screen. The changes won’t be finalized until you click the Submit button to the right of the Cancel button. If you have any questions about using any of the Teaching Style tools or are unsure which Course Structure would be best for your course, please consult your designated Instructional Designer.
