Notifications about course activity

Module pages display notifications for the course you're in. Receive automatic alerts when activity occurs in your courses:

  • My Blackboard: The Updates page displays notifications for all of your courses and the Posts page displays new content in discussions, blogs, journals, and wikis.
  • Email, text, and voice messages: If your institution allows, you can receive email, text, and voice notifications.
  • Home Page modules: Within a course, modules display notifications for that course only.
  • Mobile app push notifications: If your institution uses the Blackboard app or the Blackboard Instructor app, you can have notifications pop up on your device's screen.
  • Notifications Dashboard: The Notifications Dashboard may appear on the My Institution tab as another way to see notifications for all of your courses. Your institution can rename the tabs.

Your institution controls if notifications are enabled and the settings that users are allowed to control.

About notification settings

Manage the notification settings for all of your courses. From the menu next to your name in the page header, select Settings and then select Edit Notifications Settings.

Your institution controls if these options are available. If your institution has defined notification settings, those settings are used instead of your personal settings.

  1. Edit General Settings: Select your email format—individual messages for each notification or daily digest—and the reminder schedule for due dates.
  2. Bulk Edit Notification Settings: Change the notification settings for all of your courses at once. You can select which notifications you want to receive and the delivery method.
  3. Edit Individual Course Settings: Change the notification settings for a single course.
  4. Edit Individual Organization Settings: Change the notification settings for a single organization.

General notifications

With the general settings, you can choose if you want to receive notifications by email and if you want due date reminders.

  1. From the menu next to your name in the page header, select Settings and then select Edit Notifications Settings.
  2. On the Edit Notification Settings page, select Edit General Settings.
  3. On the General Settings page, you can choose to receive an email for each notification or a daily digest email that compiles all of the notifications for that day.
    • Individual Messages: Emails are sent for each notification. Note that the number of unread discussion messages, blog posts, and journal entries are always sent as daily digest emails.
    • Daily Email Digest: All notifications are collected and sent once a day at a time set by your institution.
  4. Select Yes to set due date reminders for notifications and choose the number of days before the due date you want to be notified. This email reminder is sent as a digest email or as individual emails, based on the option you select.
  5. Select Submit.

Choose how and when you get notifications

You can choose the types of notifications you receive and how they're delivered to you.

  1. From the menu next to your name in the page header, select Settings and then select Edit Notification Settings.
  2. On the Edit Notification Settings page, select the link for Courses I am taking or Courses I am teaching in the Bulk Edit Notification Settings section to change notification settings for all courses at once.

    Or, you can make selections for individual courses. Select a course name in the Edit Individual Course Settings section. The Current Notification Settings page appears and provides the same options.

  3. On the Change Settings page, check that your Notification Destinations are correct. You can make changes in your Personal Information.
  4. In the Settings section, choose how your notifications are delivered. Select the check box at the top of a column to receive all of your chosen notifications the same way. Clear the box for any notification that you don't want to receive.
    • Dashboard: By default, all notification types appear in My Blackboard's Updates and Posts pages and in course home pages. They also appear in the Notifications Dashboard if your institution has access to the community engagement features.
    • Mobile: This column appears if your institution has enabled the Blackboard app or the Blackboard Instructor app. Choose which push notifications you want to appear on your mobile device. Push notifications appear on your device's screen even if you don't open the app. You can receive these notifications:
      • Announcement Available
      • Content Item Available
      • Course or Organization Available
      • Item Graded
      • Test Available
      • Test Due
      • Test Overdue
  5. Email, SMS, and text-to-voice: Email, SMS, and text-to-voice notification messages are sent with the information you provided in your personal information.
  6. Select Submit.

Email, mobile, SMS, and text-to-voice notifications are turned off by default. If you don't see a column for a notification method, that option isn't available at your institution.

You need to select Daily Email Digest in your general notification settings to select email notifications for these items:

  • Number of unread discussion messages
  • Number of unread blog posts
  • Number of unread journal entries

SMS (text) and text-to-voice notifications

SMS (text) and text-to-voice messages may be available at your institution. These message types are delivered by the Blackboard Learn system every 20 minutes by default. Your institution can set a delivery timeframe so that you don't send or receive messages in the middle of the night. Messages that you create outside of the delivery timeframe are held until the next timeframe begins.

  • With SMS, you can send text messages from a Blackboard Learn course to your students' mobile phones. You need to initiate a message before students can reply.
  • Text-to-voice reads aloud notifications sent to your phone. This option is only available when the system default language pack is set to English or Spanish.

If your institution has set up SMS and text-to-voice messages, the features are listed on your Edit Notification Settings page. You must list a mobile phone number on your Personal Information page and subscribe to SMS and text-to-voice messages in your notification settings.

Notification types

Blackboard Learn notifies you when these events occur if you set the notification type to On in the Edit Notifications Settings area:

  • Announcement Available
  • Assignment Available
  • Assignment Due or Past Due
  • Assignment Needs Grading
  • Blog Needs Grading
  • Content Item Available
  • Course Available
  • Course Message Received
  • Course Quota Soft Limits
  • Discussion Board Forum Needs Grading
  • Discussion Board Thread Needs Grading
  • Gradable Item Due
  • Journal Needs Grading
  • Needs Reconciliation
  • Retention Center Rule Details
  • Survey Available
  • Survey Due or Overdue
  • Survey Submitted
  • Test Available
  • Test Due or Overdue
  • Test Needs Grading
  • Unread Blog Posts
  • Unread Journal Entries
  • Unread Discussion Board Messages
  • Wiki Needs Grading

Events that remove notifications

An item's notification is deleted when any of these happen:

  • A course item is deleted.
  • A course is made unavailable.
  • A course item's end date is reached.
  • A student submits the test, survey, or assignment that generated an item available notification.
  • An instructor grades the item that generated a needs grading notification.
  • A course item's adaptive release rules are no longer met by the student.
  • Notification of an item's availability is deleted after it's marked as reviewed—for a course item with review enabled.
  • Unread discussion posts, blog entries, and journal entries are viewed.
  • A student no longer meets a Retention Center rule criterion.
  • An item has passed its duration as determined by administrator settings—the default setting is 120 days.