How to Embed a Video in your Blackboard Course the Easy Way

1.  Go to http://youtube.com and upload the video as "Unlisted" so the video will not be public

http://screencast.com/t/x4kmxHKW

2.  Enter your course site in Blackboard and make sure Edit Mode is set to ON at the top-right so you can add content to your course

3.  Go into a content area such as "Course Material" and click the "Build Content > Item" option

http://screencast.com/t/ipQtfBasIy

4.  Give the item a title and in the text editor click the video button in the toolbar (it looks like a small webcam with a red dot):

http://screencast.com/t/fEWZYyUv

5.  Click the "Browse" tab.  Sign into YouTube, locate the video that you uploaded in step 1, and click the "insert" button

http://screencast.com/t/gbw6lp4z

6.  Change the Width and Height to 640 x 480 and click the Insert button

http://screencast.com/t/eDVTWBsVAT

7.  Scroll down and click the Submit button in Blackboard

That's it.  Your video is posted.  To see what this looks like from your students' point of view, try the Student View option.

Blackboard Online Collaboration

There are several options for online collaborate in Blackboard.  Here are a few of them.

Blackboard Collaborate is a real-time Webex-like live conferencing system built into Blackboard. The system can handle hundreds of students at once with multiple moderators (instructors). Features include live video and audio, a whiteboard feature, chat, and application/web sharing. Blackboard Collaborate is located in the Tools section of your Blackboard course.

• Information Technology Services overview page 
• Collaborate documentation
• Collaborate overview using Collaborate to demonstrate the tool (open the downloaded jnlp file)
• First make sure you have the latest version of Java installed

Blackboard IM is a live text-based Chat which you can use with your students. Blackboard IM is located in the Tools section of your Blackboard course.

• Blackboard IM Product Overview
• Blackboard IM user guide
• Blackboard IM online help and manuals

Blackboard Discussion Boards are a well-understood traditional asynchronous way to post content and have your students communicate with the instructor and each other.

• Discussion Board video overview
• Discussion Board Documentation

Tegrity: To record a prepared video lecture which you can offer to the students as part of your online classroom experience, please use the Tegrity Class Capture feature, located in your Blackboard course.

• Information Technology Services Overview
• To record a class from your Blackboard Course
• Tegrity documenation for instructors
• Northeastern Tegrity Blog

Google Hangouts/Google On Air

For casual, non-moderated live video collaborate, we can recommend "Google Hangouts On Air". This service allows you to broadcast video and audio to many people with whiteboard and document collaboration.  This service is not affiliated with Northeastern University, but you can invite the students from your Blackboard course to your Hangout by getting their email addresses from your Blackboard course site.

• Google Hangout On Air overview
• Start a Hangout-on-air
• Use your student’s email address to invite students, available in your Blackboard course
• You may obtain a list of your students' email addresses from Blackboard > Course Tools > Student Email Addresses

How to Upload Questions from a File into a Question Pool in Blackboard

To create a pool of test questions in blackboard, you will need to begin with an empty pool.

From Control Panel -> Organizational Tools -> Tests, Surveys and Pools, click "Pools" and then
"Build Pool":  http://screencast.com/t/5EK5MXDiS1

Once you have built the pool, you are ready to import test questions.   Questions must follow the Blackboard question and answer format here:

https://help.blackboard.com/en-us/Learn/9.1_SP_10_and_SP_11/Instructor/070_Tests_Surveys_Pools/106_Uploading_Questions#file_format

An example of this format can be seen in this video, which also shows how to save as a tab delimited file from Excel:

http://screencast.com/t/Kdc2z7TTghA

If you are creating your test questions in a text editor, you can simply use the tab key between fields and then save the file as text (.txt).

If you are working in Excel, you must specify the file type “tab delimited text.”     

To import your test questions to your question pool, from Control Panel -> Course Tools -> Tests, Surveys and Pools, click "Pools."   Click the arrow next to the name of your pool to display the options menu, and choose "Edit."

In the next screen, choose "Upload Questions."  Browse to your question file and select the file, then assign a default number of points per question.  This number can be changed later.  Click "Submit" to complete the upload:   http://screencast.com/t/Lagew9vEUHU