Would you like a “Common Materials” site?

Instructors faced with several sections of the same course, or who have students scattered through registration into many different CRNs, may request a Blackboard site that pulls all those students together for more efficient communication. At EKU we call these combinations “Common Materials” sites. In the simplest arrangement, the instructor makes only the Common Materials site available to students, and then all online activities for the class occur in that single location.

The primary drawback to the Common Materials site approach is that Blackboard’s gradebook in such a course has only a single alphabetic listing, which creates some difficulties for entering grades “by section.” If this is a problem, instructors can use the separate (individual section) sites for recording grades. In fact, the separate sites can be used for any purposes involving those groups.

To obtain a common materials site, email onlinelearning@eku.edu with the name of the course and the list of CRNs to be combined. If you have existing Blackboard content that should be copied into the new site, include the name of the relevant course.

Directions regarding student enrollments: our Common Materials sites are not populated directly from the registration system. The simplest way to get students enrolled as users in your Common Materials course is:

1. Go into the Bb site for one of the separate sections.
2. Open the Control Panel--Course Copy--Copy Course Materials into an Existing Course.
3. Select the Common Materials course as your destination, scroll to the bottom of the window to check the box for Enrollment, and then click Submit.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 for each of the separate sections you want to combine.
5. Check the enrollment in the Common Materials course through Control Panel--List/Modify Users.

If you have many sections to combine, or if you need help understanding these directions, please email onlinelearning@eku.edu.

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