Blackboard Communication Tools

Owned by Heather Ulrich
Last updated: Jun 15, 2023Version comment
2 min read

Learn more about the built-in Blackboard tools available for communicating with your students. There are also several learning tool integrations (LTI) available for communicating with students and building community. Please reach out to Academic Computing with any questions.

Looking for documentation for Ultra Course View? Visit Blackboard Ultra Communication Tools

Announcements

Announcements are an ideal way to post time-sensitive information critical to course success. Add announcements for these types of course activities:

  • Due dates for assignments and projects
  • Changes to your syllabus
  • Corrections/clarifications of materials
  • Exam schedules

You can add, edit, and delete announcements from the Announcements page. When you add an announcement, you can also send it as an email to students in your course. Students receive the announcement even if they don't log into your course.

Create an Announcement

  1. On the Course Home Page look for the Announcements module and select More Announcements...
  2. On the Announcements page, select Create Announcement
  3. Type a Subject, which appears as the title of the announcement on the Announcements page.
  4. Type your message.
  5. In the Web Announcements Options section, you can choose to restrict the announcement by date:
    • If you choose Not Date Restricted, the announcement is visible until you remove it.
    • If you choose Date Restricted, select the Display After and Display Until check boxes to enable the date and time selections. Provide the date and time restriction settings. To display an announcement from a date forward, select the Display After check box and provide a date and time, but don't select the Display Until check box.
  6. Select the Email Announcement check box to send an email with the announcement to all course members, which includes students, instructors, and teaching assistants.
  7. Optionally, in the Course Link section, select Browse to link to a course area, tool, or item.
  8. Select Submit.

Email

The email tool allows you to send email to other people in your course without launching a separate email program and having to look up the student emails. You can send email to individual users, the entire class, or to groups of users.

More information can be found on Blackboard's Help: Original Experience and Email

You can include hyperlinks in any textbox within Blackboard, including emails and announcements, by following these steps:

  1. Select Insert Link (If you do not see the option, expand the text box (...)
  2. Enter the URL
  3. Replace the "text to display" with a descriptive text, such as the name of the resource you're linking out to.
  4. Under Open Link In, select New Window
  5. Select Save

Contact the ITS Help Desk in the Library Room 230 or at (203) 254-4069 for assistance.