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Student Frequently Asked Questions
The following Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's)
have been developed to assist students get answers to common questions. You
can see our Blackboard information website homepage for
useful and important links. Visit Login Help page for
Login and E-mail questions.
Please Note:
UMCP Course Availability Policy
Student access to courses will continue for
3 weeks after the course ends.
So, STUDENTS:
If there are any course contents you want to keep longer,
you need to save the documents from your course to
your local computer as soon as you can, or before the course is set to
Unavailable.
This policy is set by the
Campus Registrar Office. Please
email concerns if there are any to Registrar Customer Service at:
rr-cs@deans.umd.edu.
In addition, with campus OIT's policy, all term-based courses more than
Two years old will be
purged from BB system sometime in mid-summer.
As a
response, we have set All those old courses as "Unavailable" to students
now. Students may still be able to see some old courses in Fall 2006 if the
instructor haven't set them to Unavailable. While if you want to keep
any course documents, PLEASE be prepared in advance, save them to your
local disk. There is NO Way to get your course
documents back once the course be removed. See more updates
in our Blackboard support site home page. |
Login
and Password
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What is the University Directory ID? How do I get
an UM Directory ID and setup
password?
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What I need to know about the Directory account
Password?
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Will it cause Blackboard login problem if I
change my Directory ID or password?
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How do I change my email address used by
Blackboard?
Course Availability
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Where do I find links to courses I enrolled?
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I registered to a course, but why I cannot see it
when login to Blackboard?
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Can I modify the course list in my Blackboard
home page? I do not want old courses showing there.
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How long I can access the course, and how long
will the course stay in system?
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Where to find the Course
Syllabi?
Other
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What browser should I use? What should I do if
the pages not function well?
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In Internet Explorer, it opens
linked files right there in the browser instead of in a separate window. What should I do?
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Where can I find additional Blackboard
documentation for students?
Contact Us
Q
What is the University Directory ID? How do I get
an UM Directory ID and setup
password?
A University Directory ID is gradually
being used by the university to provide single sign-on to web applications
including Testudo and Blackboard system, so students don't have to remember
multiple login names. Visit http://directory.umd.edu for campus
OIT website regarding your Directory account. Visit our
Accounts Overview Chart for
other systems around campus that uses this login.
You will get an UM Directory account
once you are admitted and enrolled to a course. To find out what's your
Directory ID and to set a password, visit our
Login Help page. You may need to active your account
first. Then you can try login to Blackboard System and access your courses.
Q
What I need to know about the Directory account
Password?
A You need to use your University Directory ID
and Password to gain access to Blackboard online course system. Please review
carefully about UM Directory Password
Information and policy.
Smith IT has similar information when you visit
http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/smithit/, then go to
Accounts under IT Support area
and check on the Password
Policy page.
All new UM Directory passwords remain valid for up to 180 days.
If you allow your password to expire, you will be unable
to access the many services that utilize the Directory password. Change
your password by visiting
http://www.oit.umd.edu/password/ and clicking the Update Your Directory
Password button at the left of the page (at
https://directory.umd.edu/password).
If your password does expire before you have an opportunity to change it, you
will be able to use your old password for the sole purpose of selecting a new
password. You can also contact Campus OIT helpdesk at 301-405-1500
regarding your password issue.
Q
Will it cause Blackboard login problem if I
change my Directory ID or password?
A If you just changed your Directory
ID, it will take 1-2 days for you to be able to login to BB again using your new
ID (usually should be Ok the next day; and old ID and password will not work),
although you may be able to login to Portal system using new ID and password
immediately. If there are urgent needs to access Blackboard, please call our
helpdesk at 301-405-2269 and asked to be transfer to Blackboard System
Administrator and get help.
Directory password change takes
effect immediately, so should not cause a login problem.
Q
How do I change my email address used by
Blackboard?
A E-mail changes CANNOT be done from
Blackboard. As a student, to change your email address, go to
http://www.testudo.umd.edu/Registrar.html, choose "Change
Address / E-mail". Once you make the change there, Blackboard will import
that information within 24 hours.
Visit our
BB Login Help page for all detailed instructions regarding Login ID,
password and Email issues.
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Q
Where do I find links to courses I enrolled?
A You can access your registered
Business school courses as well as other school courses across UM once you login at:
http://bb.rhsmith.umd.edu. Login can
also be performed by accessing the eSmith Portal at
https://portal.rhsmith.umd.edu/. Select
the Course Management channel for Blackboard access. (Note: the portal is only
available to R. H. Smith students, staff, and faculty.)
Once you get in, you will see a list of your
courses and some useful information in your Blackboard home page. You can see a
full list of your courses in Course Sites tab.
Q
I registered to a course, but why I cannot see it
when login to Blackboard?
A There are several possible reasons:
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Your instructor hasn't requested the course to
be setup in Blackboard system yet.
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The course has been setup, but currently the
instructor made it "Unavailable" to students.
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If you registered the course just recently, it
may take a couple of days to be added to the Blackboard roster
automatically.
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Your registration has a financial hold.
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You are not officially enrolled in this course
or on the waiting list.
Q
Can I modify the course list in my Blackboard
home page? I do not want old courses showing there.
A You can modify the course listed on your
Blackboard home page, the first page that you see after you login to
Blackboard. For instance, if you want to display only current semester
courses, you can actually "hide" the courses you do not want to list on
the home page. Here is how: With "Home" tab is selected, you can see a
little pencil icon usually on the top-right side, in "My Courses" table
box. If you put cursor on it, it will read as Modify the module: My Courses.
Hit on the button, "Customize: My Courses" page will be displayed. You
can deselect the courses that you don't want to be displayed, or choose the
items that you want to be displayed in your course view, press Submit to have
the changes take effect.
You can also modify your Blackboard home page
contents and layout by clicking on
Modify Content
or
Modify Layout
button on the top-right corner when you are in Home tab of Blackboard pages.
Q
How long I can access the course, and how long
will the course stay in system?
A PLEASE NOTE that with campus
OIT and Registrar's Office current policy,
student access to courses will continue for 3 weeks after the course ends.
So, if there are any course contents you want to keep
longer,
you need to save the documents from your course to
your local computer as soon as you can, or before the course is set to
Unavailable. (See
note on the top of this page.)
Currently there's no good solution
for this issue. Some students may heard
"Backpack" software
to save a copy of Blackboard courses. The campus is doing research over this
product. If it's available, we will give you updates here.
If you need to access a previous course, please contact your instructor first. If your instructor approved,
he/she can send email to
bbhelp@rhsmith.umd.edu, we will make you active again in that
course.
The course will be staying in the
Blackboard system for two years. After
then, the campus will remove the course.
Q.
Where to find the Course
Syllabi?
A. There is a
Public Syllabi page available for Business School users. Short after the
course is setup and the instructor posted course syllabi to the Blackboard
course site, Smith IT will post it to the public syllabi page. Link to preview syllabi is available from the Blackboard
login page (http://bb.rhsmith.umd.edu),
and this R. H. Smith Blackboard information and FAQ website (http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/blackboard).
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Q.
What browser should I use? What should I do if
the pages not function well?
A.
For both Windows PC and Macintosh OS users, generally
we recommend Netscape 7.1, IE 5.5 and Firefox 1.0 or higher for best compatibility
with the Blackboard as well as our
eSmith portal system. You cannot use AOL built-in browser for Blackboard.
For Macintosh OS users, we do not recommend that you use Safari, especially when
using the text entry features, such as the announcements and discussion areas. If
the browser you used having a problem when trying to access a file, you may try
another browser such as Mozilla Firefox.
Blackboard requires that you have a newer browser, JavaScript and cookies turned
on. Besides, Blackboard application uses Java technology in many areas. If some
pages do not function well in your browser, you may need to install Java Runtime
Environment (JRE) for All Operating Systems from
http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp. In most cases Blackboard
will initiate this Java installation when needed.
Q.
In Internet Explorer, when I click the link to a
Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or Acrobat PDF file in the browser window, it opens
right there in the browser instead of in a separate window. This makes printing
difficult and is annoying! What should I do?
A. This is a "feature" of Windows, and
there's nothing Blackboard can do from the server side to fix it. You have two
options:
- You can download the
file by right-clicking on the link and picking "Save
Target As..." Then you can open the file directly
from your hard drive in the appropriate application.
- If you want to really
fix the problem, you can follow the following procedure to
change the way Explorer handles the files
1. On your computer,
double-click on My Computer
2. In the Windows Explorer, go to Tools Menu->Folder
Options
3. Click on File Types tab
4. Scroll through the list until you see the extensions you
want (DOC for MS Word, XLS for Excel, PPT for Powerpoint,
PDF for Acrobat PDF)
5. Click once on the Extension and then on the Advanced button
6. On the bottom of the dialog box, be sure that Browse
in Same Window is NOT checked
7. Click OK and repeat with other extensions you
might want to change
Q.
Where can I find additional Blackboard
documentation for students?
A. To access the online Student Manual
from inside any course, click the Tools button, then click on User
Manual.
Q
I have some other questions regarding Blackboard,
where
should I ask for help?
A To ensure your request has a
guaranteed reply, help us provide you with the best quality support, and helps
us better track trends in support requests, please send all Blackboard questions
and issues to
bbhelp@rhsmith.umd.edu. You can also
stop by Smith IT helpdesk at Room #3520, Van Munching Hall, or call us at
301-405-2269.
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