January 12, 2015
Week 1 - Blackboard Date Management - Week of 01/12/15
It is nice that each semester you can reuse your class from a previous semester and only need to tweak the content and assignments a bit. It is a pain, if you use dates, you need to go through and painstakingly change each one throughout the class. Or is it??
A new tool introduced with the latest version of Blackboard, that ECU is using, is the Date Management Tool. It allows you to have all of the dates in your course change by a number of days that you, the instructor, determines, up to +/- 999 days.
Yes, I can already hear you saying, “But all the dates in the class won’t change exactly the same amount!” I’m sure that is true, but personally I would rather go in and manually change a few dates than have to go in and manually change each and every date, wouldn’t you? But, let’s say you wouldn’t, in the Date Management Tool, you can choose to “List All Dates For Review” and it will allow you to choose specific items and change dates as you see fit, if that works better for you.
Personally, I recommend a combination of the two. A broad sweep of the course getting the dates into at least the right semester, and then “List All Dates For Review” to go in and tweak several dates at once that still need adjusting for holidays, breaks etc.
Another option you have, once you get your dates in the right ball park is to use the calendar itself. It is particularly useful when dates need to be changed individually or on the fly. Next week, we’ll discuss how to use the Blackboard calendar to make your life, and the life of your students easier.
Plan to attend the profession development session “Becoming Date Friendly in Blackboard” on using the Calendar and the Date Management Tool on February 2nd from 2-3 pm in Speight 225. To attend, register today using Cornerstone!
Throughout the semester, the OAA-Instructional Technology Team will be offering Professional Development opportunities. For more information on these opportunities, please visit the COE Professional Development website. We are currently still in the planning process for this semester, so please use this website if you have any specific requests. To register for any professional development sessions, please use Cornerstone.