Effective Blackboard Layouts

This page has links to resources for Bb and I'll write about my own experiences and suggestions for best practices.

One of the things that I hate about Bb and even Coursera is the separation between discussion board and the reading.

Sidebar Examples

First, the sidebar - aka the underlying organization of your course. Here are some examples:

Structure Examples

by topic in the folder Course Materials

by week in the folder Course Work

by unit or sections (in sidebar menu) then with several weeks (organized inside folders within each unit). 

My Preferences

When you view these examples altogether, no wonder students say they get a little confused and find it hard to follow multiple classes-- I'm confused just looking at all of them! 

Truth be told, I've probably tried all of the above. I think in terms of units and with subfolders, but I've found that it can be confusing for students. While I know exactly what topics fall in which units, it's not self-evident to students who don't know the subject as well as I do. 

So for the last could of years I've been using Lehman College's Bb template with the weeks and dates clearly visible from the sidebar menu. This structure has the advantage of being clear to everyone what module to be viewing.

While the full name of each week's module isn't visible in the sidebar, I do give the module a topic name.

I do modify it a little:

Useful Links

GC's Module Making Camp