Beginning in December, IIT Online will offer three new faculty workshops in addition to the general orientation session for Blackboard. These are hands-on workshops to introduce and support faculty in building courses. Faculty should bring a laptop and be prepared to work on their own courses. The workshops will be offered in sequence, but there are no prerequisites to attend any session:

Content & Communications: The focus of this workshop is loading or creating material in your course shell for students to consume.
Assessment Tools: The focus of this workshop is using tools for evaluating student use and mastery (primarily through the creation of assignments and tests).
Grade Center: The focus of this workshop is using the Blackboard native Grade Center.

Sign up on the training page of our Blackboard at IIT site.

Remember that if you currently have content in this semester’s Blackboard, you have some homework before the next time your course runs: Course content will NOT automatically be moved to the new system. Registered students will now have course access 21 days before the semester start—on or about Monday, December 24.

It’s only 56 days until the spring session starts with courses live in the new version of Blackboard. Have you tried it out yet? You can find it at newblackboard.iit.edu.