The Academy has created a Blackboard Course Template to help faculty in their course development each semester. Using this template is not required; however, it may give you ideas for organizing your course materials, save you time building course structures, and ultimately provide students with a more consistent navigation of your course shell.
The Blackboard Course Template is a complete course shell with a fully developed orientation module and a weekly folder structure that aligns with semester course dates. The template can only be copied into empty Blackboard course shells, so request a copy using the form below before adding additional content to your shells.
The Academy developed a series of short video tutorials that provide a tour of the course template (using a Fall 2020 version of the template as an example) along with step-by-step instructions for working with the template in Blackboard and customizing it to fit your needs. The tutorial videos also address the 15 essential features of an online course, as outlined in the Essential Online Course Features Checklist.
- Tutorial 1: Creating Orientation Activities
- Tutorial 2: Creating Learning Activities
- Tutorial 3: Creating Instructor Presence & Feedback
- Tutorial 4: Creating an Accessible Course
If you would like to request the Blackboard Course Template copied into an empty course shell for you, please fill out the Academy Request Form.