Typical Academic Course Features
Your course might be a bit different than what's listed here, but these are the usual basic components each instructor starts with, which they may customize to their course's needs.
The Announcements page is the first thing you see when you enter your course.
Look here for the instructor's welcome and for new announcements about course updates, new material, or any other special instructions or new assignments. Click the Announcements button any time you're inside the course to return to the Announcements page, which you can think of as the home page for the class.
Look here to meet your instructor when you first begin the course.
Your instructor may put any personal and contact information about herself or himself in this section, or may include this kind of information in the welcome segment of the Course Information area. (For orientation, we change the name of this button to Staff Information and include staff at HCO.) For other courses, your professor will populate this segment, and may include additional contact information, a bio, and sometimes even office hours and how to best reach her or him at those times.
Read this before you begin any work for your course!
Crucial information such as the introduction from the instructor, the syllabus, course description and requirements, information about course textbooks and software, and other important instructions are all here. You'll find yourself referring back to it because of the essential information it contains. Sometimes this area is instead named "Introduction" or something similar.
This is where your core materials are (in most classes) for all your actual lessons.
In Course Information you find the syllabus that tells you when to expect a new lesson; you find the new lesson itself in the Course Materials section. It forms a cumulative archive of class materials presented by your instructor. (This segment is sometimes instead named "Topics," "Lessons," or something similar.)
Academic students spend most of their class time reading and posting to the Blackboard discussion board.
Because it's so important, online class discussion using the board is one of the first things students try in the orientation program. You can read more about the specifics of the discussion board on this page[crosslink to C. 3. Using the Discussion Board Viewing Options].
You can view the class list using the roster, and follow links to students' home pages in the student center.
You can send classmates e-mail using this built-in tool-either selecting students individually or choosing to e-mail all class participants at once. (This option includes the instructor in the e-mail.)
This button brings you to the form where you can add information about yourself and upload a photo to share. Viewing access to this page is limited strictly to other HCO students who have access to the online student center by logging on to Blackboard.
The best and fastest way to get help with technical issues at Hebrew College online (other than Web conferencing) is to use the help desk system. The Help! button in your course brings you directly to that system. You create and manage your own account with the help desk system-it is not associated with other HCO login accounts, and will remain semester to semester even as your courses change.
Once you create your account and log in to the help desk system, you will see a "Self Service" option. Please click that option to read through any self-service item relevant to your question-most likely, your question has come up before and there is a solution. There is also contact information for getting 24/7 help for Web conferencing issues directly from the Web conferencing company.
If you do not find the solution you need, you can then use the "Submit a Service Request" link at the help desk main menu to ask for individual technical help.
Bread Crumbs
"Bread crumbs" is the Web term for the little links at the top of the page that tell you where you are and the Web site architecture that leads there. Each link leads to an earlier page in a sequence.
So, for example, you might be in the Orientation course and see-above the real content of the course, but still in the white frame below the overall Blackboard navigation with the "Hebrew College Online" and "Courses" tabs-very small titles, in capital letters, showing you where you are. In this case you'd see "COURSES > ORIENTATION TO ONLINE STUDY AT HEBREW COLLEGE... > ORIENTATION MATERIALS > BLACKBOARD: HEBREW COLLEGE'S ONLINE COURSE ENVIRONMENT." (The links won't work unless you are currently registered in the Orientation.)
Get it? Bread crumb links allow you, like Hansel and Gretel, to follow your path back the way you came.
If you're looking at an external Web page while in Blackboard (like now), there are no bread crumbs. If you need to get back to a page you've already visited, you'll need to use your browser's back button or left-hand navigation.
