This document provides instructions for faculty on how to create and use custom user alerts in Blackboard Learn. It explains that alerts can be set to appear as a pop-up or at the top of the course page. It outlines the steps to create an alert, including selecting recipients, entering message text, start/end dates, display method, status color, and acknowledgement settings. Faculty can then view student acknowledgements and edit or delete previous alerts.
1. How to use Custom User
Alerts in Blackboard Learn
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Custom User Alerts can be set 1) to appear as a pop up message
when a student first logs into a course or 2) to appear at the top
of the course page.
Faculty can access the
Custom User Alerts tool
by navigating to Course
Management in the left
hand menu in their
courses. Under Course
Tools, select Custom
User Alerts.
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Under Select Recipients, select either All Course Users or
Selected Student(s). To select a specific student or students,
click on Browse.
Inside the Browse pop-up
window put a check mark
next to the names of the
individuals that will see the
Alert. Then select Submit.
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After selecting Submit in the Browse pop-up window, confirm
that the correct names appear next to Selected Student(s).
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Enter the text for your Alert in the Message box. You may use
the HTML Editor to format any text that is entered.
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Tokens: To automatically personalize Alerts, faculty may wish to
use Tokens when creating the text of the Alert. Below is the
First Name Token:
@X@ras.firstname@X@
Tokens are case sensitive, so make sure the X is capitalized.
For more about Tokens, visit the Rasmussen Faculty Guide to Blackboard
Learn (Password AAOPD):
http://guides.rasmussen.edu/facultyguidetoBlackboardLearn/tokens
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Enter the start and end dates that correspond with the dates
that the Alert should display.
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Choose the Display Method you want for the Alert.
Choosing Top of
Course Home Page
will show your alert
at the top at the
page.
Choosing Pop-up
Window will display
as a pop-up when
the student enters
the course.
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Top of Course Home Page Alerts: Students click the X to
"acknowledge” that they have read the Alert and this will
remove the Alert from the page. These alerts will not re-appear
when a student leaves and then reenters the course, UNLESS
an instructor sets the alert to “always display.”
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Pop-up window alerts must be acknowledged by the student
before they can click anywhere else or navigate in the course.
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Choose a Display Status color to indicate the urgency of the
Alert.
Green = OK
Yellow= Warning
Red= Urgent
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Always Display determines how often the alert will appear upon
log in. The description reads, “Display the alert regardless of
the user having previously acknowledged it. Please exercise
caution when making alerts always display, as this can frustrate
users.”
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Faculty can return to the Custom User Alerts dashboard to
review student acknowledgements of the various alerts. In the
Acknowledged column, faculty can click on the blue hyper link
to view a list of students that have acknowledged the Custom
Alert.
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Within the Custom User Alerts dashboard, faculty can edit the
alerts by clicking on the text in the Subject column.
Note: Alerts for single users cannot
be edited once they are
acknowledged. A new alert would
need to be created in this case.
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Faculty can also delete or archive previous alerts by selecting
the box to the left of the alert recipient list and clicking on
Delete or Archive. Deleting alerts will remove them completely
from Learn. Archiving preserves alerts and allows you to copy
them from course to course each term using the tool Copy
from Another Course.
Note: At the end of each
term, you should archive
alerts that you wish to use
again in another course
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Under Course Tools, use Copy from Another Course to copy
these alerts from course-to-course.
