Blackboard offers several tools to enhance online courses, including discussion boards for sharing thoughts, blogs for online journaling, journals for private student reflections, and wikis for collaborative content creation. The tools also allow instructors to manually or randomly assign students to groups, where they can work on private group projects using tools like blogs, wikis, and file exchanges. Additional features include self and peer assessments, assignments for submitting work, plagiarism detection with SafeAssignment, and various types of automatically and manually graded tests and surveys.

1. Blackboard Tools To
Enhance Your
Online Course
Blackboard Learn SP 9.1.8
Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

2. Discussion Boards
• A place to share thoughts and conversations
• Public to the class
• Instructor creates forums with directions
• Students create threads and post replies

3. Blogs
• Means web log or an
online journal
• Public to the course
• Each student writes blog
entries
• Students can comment
on classmates’ blogs

4. Journals
• Places for students to
reflect and write
• Students can write
multiple entries
throughout the course
• Instructor selects if
journals are public or
private

5. Wikis
• A page that allows collaborative editing
• Students can create content, edit and write comments
• Public to class or public to group
• Instructor can track participation and contributions

6. Wiki Example

7. Comparison

8. Groups
• Instructors can manually create groups, randomly
assign groups, or let students self enroll
• Group tools are private to group members only
• Group tools include: file exchange, group blog, group
discussion board, group journal, group tasks, and
group wiki

9. Self and Peer Assessment
• The instructor assigns questions for students to reflect
on their own work or for students to evaluate their
peers’ work.
• Select the number of peers for students to evaluate
and leave the rest up to Blackboard.

11. Assignment
• Students submit work individually and
privately to the instructor
Safe Assignment
• An individual assignment that is also compared
against a database to identify matching
writing.
• Instructor and student receive an originality
report.

12. Tests and Surveys
• Tests are graded and
surveys are not graded
• Variety of question
types
• Many questions are
automatically graded
except essay, file
response and short
answer

13. Summary of Blackboard Tools
• Discussion Boards
• Blogs
• Journals
• Wikis
• Groups
• Self and Peer Assessment
• Assignment
• Safe Assignment
• Tests and Surveys