Blackboard and Course Site Access
Accessing Blackboard
Logging into Blackboard
Creating a course site in Blackboard
Combining multiple sections or multiple courses into a single course site
My Blackboard course site is not listed
Accessing Blackboard
To access Blackboard, you need:
A computer with Internet access
A browser with cookies and JavaScript enabled (Bb is NOT compatible with IE 6)
An active University of Saint Francis network user name and password
An active University of Saint Francis email account
Blackboard is accessible via major web browsers, including Internet Explorer (must be version 7 or newer), Mozilla Firefox, and Safari. There are some features you will still have issues with using IE 7+ if you're using it on campus. We recommend using Firefox, but if you must use IE be aware that there are some security settings that cannot currently be changed that cause some frustration when attempting to download documents.
Logging into Blackboard
You can log into Blackboard either from following the Blackboard link off the USF home page, the "Most Reqested" tab, or going directly to http://sf.blackboard.com
To log into Blackboard you must use your USF network username and password.
If you need a network password reset or cannot remember your network username and/or password please contact the Help Desk at 260.399.7700 x 6027 for assistance.
N.B. For security reasons your network password requires updating every 180 days. You can change it either by logging onto a campus computer, through your USF student email account or by enrolling in the ANIXIS password reset feature.
Creating a course site in Blackboard?
Faculty and instructors no longer need to send in requests for the creation of a course site. Course sites for fall, spring, summer I and II are automatically created 90 days prior to the beginning of any given semester/session. Approximate dates are as follows:
June - Fall courses
November - Spring courses
April/May - Summer I, Summer II courses
Combining multiple sections or multiple courses into a single Blackboard course site.
Because Blackboard pulls all of its information and data from Jenzabar when creating a course site it automatically creates a course site for every single section of a course. So, for example, if you are the instructor for ENGL.101..01, 02, 03 and section 04 you will see 4 course sites on your MyBlackboard homepage. If you teach both Nurs.265 and 268 which have always previously been combined you will see them as two separate course sites on your homepage. If you want to combine courses into a single course site (referred to as a meta-course and distinguished by the section number "00") which automatically populates all students from each section or additional course into one site, please complete a Track-It request including the complete course ID for all courses (e.g., DEPT.101..01.2010.20). If multiple instructors are involved, a seperate request is required from each instructor indicating all courses they are willing to have combined with theirs.
When courses or multiple sections are combined a tertiary course site is created with the section designation of 00. Students will then be automatically pulled from the multiple sections into this new course site. This is all done automatically by Jenzabar when the extracts are run at 7AM every morning. Therefore, these requests can often take at least 24 hours to fulfill.
My Blackboard course site is not listed
If the course that you are teaching is not listed under the "Courses you are teaching:" section of the Course List in MyBlackboard it may be due to the fact that you are not listed as the Instructor for that specific course in the Jenzabar system. To confirm this you can check with the Registrar's office. Please note that if you are a new or adjunct faculty member and have not yet completed the necessary paperwork with Human Resources it is unlikely that you will be listed as the instructor for the course in Jenzabar. If you are an adjunct or Teaching Assistant that needs access to a course site, the lead instructor for that course must request for you to be added to the course site.
