Blackboard is the online learning platform you will use as part of your studies at the University of Bristol. This is where you can access learning resources such as lecture slides or lecture recordings, engage in online activities such as discussions and receive communications from your tutors and your school team. It is essential that you access your unit’s Blackboard page regularly and actively engage with the content and activities in it.

How should I use this guide?

This guide will walk you through the main aspects of Blackboard and provide you with guidelines on how to use specific functionalities. To start with, we recommend that you review each section in order. Throughout your studies, you may need to revisit relevant sections when needed.

Can I give you feedback on this resource?

It is important to us that this resource is as useful to you as possible thus we are continuously improving it. If you find that something is missing or is not quite clear, please let us know through this form.

• Your Profile – this is where you can update your Blackboard profile (add your name pronunciation and profile image) and where you can also adjust your notification settings.
• Home Page – this page includes Digital Education News and links to useful services.
• Activity – some notifications about your units.
• Courses – this is where you can access all the units which you will be taught and assessed on. Your units carry credit points which count towards the degree you are studying.
• Organisations – apart from your unit Blackboard pages found in the Courses tab, you will also have access to Organisations. These additional Blackboard pages do not carry credit which counts towards your degree but aim to provide you with non-unit specific support to succeed in your studies. 
• Calendar – this is where you can see some of the events and due dates for your units (please note that this calendar may not be complete and it should not replace your timetable and assessment schedules provided in your units).
• My Marks – this is where you can access grades and feedback for units you are enroled on.
• Assist – this is where you can access further resources to support your studies. These tend to be more general than the resources found in Organisations: it includes things like Careers advice, Health and Wellbeing workshops, and how to use the various Library Services.
• Tools – it’s unlikely that you will have to use this tab very often, but it includes some extra tools used in your units.

Your courses and organisations may use a functionality called Progress Tracking which can help you with monitoring your progression through the content. If Progress Tracking is enabled, you will see circles next to items and progress track bars in learning modules. Watch the video below to see how to use it.

One of the communication tools is Announcements, used for communications which go to all students on the unit. You will be able to access your announcements through the Announcement tab but a copy will usually also be sent to your e-mail.

What about the ‘Messages’?

You may have also noticed the ‘Messages’ tab in your unit. This functionality enables you to reply to staff messages. This is not something that will be used by all units so please wait for clarification from your tutors and the school team on the best way of communicating with them.

Discussions

Discussions are Blackboard’s online forums. Your tutors may use them to respond to your queries, to facilitate informal discussions on a topic or even for assessment.

Journals are visible only to you and the tutor. They are often used as a tool for self-reflection where you can post your opinions, ideas, and concerns about the course, or discuss and analyse course-related materials.

Conversations work similarly to Discussions but they can be enabled for a specific item in your unit, for example for a Document that your tutor wants you to ask questions about. When enabled, these Conversations work like a comments section for the Document in question, allowing you to share thoughts about it.

Unlike Discussions, the Conversations tool does not have a separate tab at the top menu but you will see when a Conversation has been enabled for an item as a blue speech bubble will appear next to it.

There are several ways in which your tutors may share the lecture recordings in your unit:

1. Embedding or linking to them within a Document

2. Adding a link to a single recording within the unit content area.

2. Adding a link to the unit’s collection of recordings within the unit content area. 

 The Re/Play player has a number of functionalities which you may find useful including automatic captions:

Open Re/Play player information full-screen.

To learn about other functionality in Re/Play please visit the Student Essentials page created by the Digital Education Office.

If you see the icon, this means you can download alternative formats for that item:

You will then be presented with a choice of alternative formats which you can download onto your machine:

If you have specific accessibility requirements please get in touch with the Student Support services.