Blackboard - Uploading Documents

Every course in the Blackboard system comes with a blank Course Documents page already created. You may use this page to upload your Acrobat (.pdf), Word (.doc), image (.gif, .png, or .jpg) or other files that you would like to share with the participants of your course.

Logging in and Navigating to the Control Panel

Log in to the Blackboard system at http://blackboard.brynmawr.edu and select the course you would like to work with from the list entitled My Courses. At the bottom of the menu at the left, click on the link labeled Control Panel.

In the Content Areas section of the Control Panels page, click on the link for Course Documents. This leads you to the Course Documents page for your site with the following row of buttons. These buttons give you the option of specifying the type of item to add to your site.

Add Item allows your to upload documents such as Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Word, Excel, or image files.
Add Folder creates a new folder in which you may upload documents. This is a good idea if you have many documents, or if you would like your documents categorized in some way.
Add URL allows you to add a link to your Course Documents page. Remember that a valid URL always begins with http://.
Add Course Link creates links within your course website. You might, for example, create a link that takes users to a Bibliography page already created on the site.
Add Test takes you to the test and quiz creation part of Blackboard.

Adding files to your Course Documents page

The following steps outline the process of adding a document to your
Course Documents page:

Click on the Add Item button to display the Add Content page.
In the Content Information portion of the page, select a name for the item from the Name pull-down menu or enter another a title for your document in the field below. You might put the citation information for the file, or the date for which the reading is due.
If you wish, select a color for the item name text by clicking on Pick to open the ColorPicker and select a color.
You may enter information about the item in the Text field; this might be instructions or contextualizing information on the reading. You may prefer to leave this field blank.
Scroll down to the Content Attachments section. To upload a file, click on Browseand locate the file on your local computer that you wish to upload. The document’s filename must contain a file extension (e.g., .doc or .pdf) and may not have any spaces or special characters.
In the Name of Link to File field, enter the name of the link that students will click on to view the attached file. You may use any text here (e.g., the citation information, or “Click here to read the file.”).
From the Special Action pull-down menu, select an option: Create a link to this file, or Display media file within the page, or Unpackage this file. Unpackaging a file refers to files that have been created with compression software such as Aladdin DropStuff (for Macintosh computers) or WinZip (for Windows computers). In most cases, you will keep the default, Create a Link to this File.
In the Options section of the page, specify whether you want to make the content visible, display offline content, track the number of views, or the dates the content will be visible. You may leave all settings at their default, and the content will be available immediately.
Click on Submit, and click on OK when the Content Receipt page appears.
This will return you to your Course Documents page where you should now see the link to the file you just uploaded. If you now see any mistakes, you may click on Modify to make changes. You may also at this time designate the sort order of the documents contained on the page by changing the numbered drop-down menus next to the document links.

Organizing your documents

The Electronic Reserves office will provide you with your documents on disk. All documents will be in PDF (Adobe Acrobat) format, and each will be named according to the following convention: the first four letters of the author’s name, then first three letters, then two, then one of the first words of the item’s title. For example, All Our Kin by Carol Stack would be StacAllOuK.pdf. All of the documents for a given course will be collected in a folder or directory.

When you upload documents in Blackboard, you will have the opportunity to set up the final listing in any order you wish. You will also need to give each document a descriptive label or citation.

You will want to think about how the document list should appear in your Blackboard course. In the Electronic Reserves system, documents have traditionally been listed in alphabetical order by author, using the naming convention Author. “Article Title”. You may choose to place your documents in alphabetical order, in syllabus order, or perhaps in folders, with each week’s readings in its own folder.

Creating a folder in your Course Documents page

Before you upload many files, you may wish to create one or more folders to organize your materials:

Select the Add Folder button to access the Add Folder page.
In the Folder Information portion of the page, select a name for the item from the Name pull-down menu or enter another name of your choice in the field below.
If you wish, select a color for the item name text by clicking on Pick to open the ColorPicker and select a color.
Enter a description of the item in the Text field and select a text format from the options below.
In the Options section, you may designate the dates and times you would like to make this folder available.
Click on Submit, and click on OK when the Content Receipt page appears. This will bring you back to the Course Documents page where you should see your new folder in the list of documents. Clicking on the folder link will take you to another Content page in which you may upload files. Adding links to webpages or online articles

The following steps outline the process of adding a URL to your Course Documents page:

Click on the Add URL button to display the Add External Link page.
Type the name or title of the item to the Name: field. This is the label for the item, and will be the text your students will click on to access the website.
Enter the full URL into the URL: field. Make sure to include the http://. The address will not be displayed in the page. You may find it easiest to copy and paste the URL from a second web browser window.
You may enter a description of the resource in the description field, if you wish.
Change any options in the Options section if you wish; otherwise, the link will be available immediately.
Click on Submit, and click on OK when the Content Receipt page appears.
This will return you to your Course Documents page where you should now see the link to the file you just uploaded. If you now see any mistakes, you may click on Modify to make changes. You may also at this time designate the sort order of the documents contained on the page by changing the numbered drop-down menus next to the document links.

Note: some online journal vendors provide stable URLs for their articles; others do not allow direct linking to articles. JSTOR and Expanded Academic are two sources that provide stable links; LexisNexis does not. You may wish to simply download the article to your computer and then upload it using Add Item. Feel free to contact your Blackboard Support person or a reference librarian for help with this.

Making your course visible to your class

Don’t forget to “turn on” your Blackboard site so that your students can access it and retrieve their readings. Go to Control Panel > Settings > Course Availability, click Yes, and Submit.

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