How do I make my course available to students?

Set your course availability: Control Panel > Customization > Properties > Set Availability

  1. In the Set Availability section, select Yes or No.
  2. Optionally, when you make a course available, you can choose one of these options in the Set Course Duration section:
    • Continuous (default) to leave the course available without a specified start or end date.
    • Select Dates to choose a start and/or end date.
    • Days from the Date of Enrollment to specify a specific length of time users have to access the course after they enroll. This option is best for self-paced courses.
  3. Select Submit.

You can control when your course is private—or unavailable—to your students.

More on course availability

How do I create content?

Ready to add content to your course? You create your individual pieces of content in content containers: content areas, learning modules, lesson plans, and folders. In a content container, you create content from menus for content items, tests, assignments, and links to tools.

More on creating course content

Can I hide course content from students until I'm ready?

Yes. As you create content, you can set its availability. You can make content unavailable to students until you're ready for them to view it. You can also limit which content items students see based on date, time, individual users, course groups, and their performance on graded items.

What types of content can I add?

Some of your options depend on your institution's administrative settings, but typically you can add files, audio, videos, syllabi, links, and folders.

More on types of course content

How do I make my course content more accessible?

Your class is full of diverse students with unique learning abilities. Providing students with more accessible content means each individual can choose formats that work best for them. If your institution uses Blackboard Ally, you can use the tool to help ensure your course content is accessible to every student.

Ally automatically scans your course content and performs steps to make files more accessible.

Get started with Ally

What are language packs?

Language packs present Blackboard Learn with language and cultural norms matched to different audiences. Language pack preferences are defined at the system, the course or organization, and user levels.

Three levels of language packs

System level

Your institution defines one language pack as the system default. The language appears if no other language pack is specified at the course or user level.

Course level

In an Original environment, you can set a language pack that is different from the default to make all users in a course view the same language pack. For example, if you teach a Spanish language class, you may want to select Spanish for the course-level language. 

User level

Individuals may choose their preferred language packs unless a language pack choice has been set to be enforced.

Customized names for content areas and tools aren't changed with the language pack. These values stay the same for all language packs. The default names in the system are translated and appear differently in each language pack.

How do I set a language pack?

  1. On the Control Panel, expand the Customization section and select Properties.
  2. On the Properties page, make a selection from the Language Pack list.
  3. Select Enforce Language Pack to always display this course in the selected language pack.
  4. Select Submit.

If you don't choose a language pack for a course, the course will display in the user's preferred language pack. Or, if the user hasn't set a preferred language pack, the system default language pack displays.

Why are some course areas not impacted by language pack selections?

For the most part, the Control Panel appears in the selected language pack of a course and not in the language pack selected by the user. In a few places within a course, the page will display with the system default or the user's preferred language pack rather than the course language pack. These pages won't display in the selected course language pack:

  • Control Panel > Course Information > Edit Item, Copy Item, Add Item, Delete Item
  • Control Panel > Copy Files to Content Collection
  • Control Panel > Discussion Board > Add Forum
  • Control Panel > Announcements > Confirmation receipt

When using right-to-left language, English numbers are never flipped. For example, something like A58B265 stays the same in left-to-right and right-to-left. Dates, slashes, and media controls don't change direction, but directionals and scroll bars flip or switch locations.

Whether it's the Hijri or Gregorian calendar, if it's written in English with English numbers, the calendar displays left-to-right. However, if it's in Arabic, the calendar flips and is displayed right-to-left.