Blackboard FAQ for Instructors

A. You can access Blackboard through login.fitchburgstate.edu or directly at blackboard.fitchburgstate.edu. Enter your full fitchburgstate.edu email address and Falcon Key password.

A. You might have noticed that Blackboard just launched a host of improvements and updates to the website. This is one of the improvements that Blackboard is still working on. Although your future courses might not be displayed in the "Upcoming Courses" item in the drop-down menu, that does not affect your assignment to teach a course. You can see future course assignments by selecting the relevant term in the drop-down menu.

A. All students enrolled in official university courses listed in the Banner student records system will automatically be enrolled in a corresponding Blackboard course site. Instructors do not need to manually enroll students or request a Blackboard site for their course.

A. Most likely you have not been officially assigned as the instructor for the course in Banner (student information system). Contact the Registrar at 978.665.4196 to check on the status of your course assignment. Once you have been officially assigned as the instructor of a course Blackboard will reflect the change in Banner within 12 hours or less.

A. Make sure Course Availability has been turned on. You can do this by following the steps below:

  1. Under Control Panel (left column of course home page) expand Customization.
  2. Click the Properties option.
  3. Click the Yes radio option next to Make Course Available.
  4. Click the Submit button.

Your students should now see your Blackboard course listed in the "Courses" section when they login to Blackboard.

A. Yes, just complete the "Merge Multiple Course Sections Request" online form.

A. If the Grades shown in the Turnitin Blackboard Direct integration assignment inbox view do not match the grades that are shown in the Blackboard Grade Center view, the "Force Refresh Submissions" tool can be used to refresh the grades in the Grade Center. The Force Refresh Submissions tool can be accessed from:

Course Tools > Turnitin Direct Tools > Support Tool: Force Refresh Submissions (grey link)

A. You can copy content from another Blackboard course you are assigned to by following the Copy/Reuse Course Content instructions.

If you are not the instructor of the course you wish to copy from, please contact the instructor of the originating course to get permission. Ask that person to open a Help Desk ticket requesting that you be added to their course for the purposes of copying content.

A. This is a known issue for Blackboard. At this time it is recommended that students be advised not to use the Blackboard mobile app for taking a test if it includes images.

A.  If an announcement is created with a publish date in the future, it has been found that an email containing the announcement is not reliably sent to students. Blackboard has confirmed this is a bug. Unfortunately we don't have an estimated date on when the issue will be resolved.