There are a lot of clever ways to keep from losing those little USB drives, but they invariably end up missing or damaged or you just have too many to keep track of them all. Now you can forget about those flash or thumb drives and try a “cloud drive” instead, which you can access with most internet enabled devices with a browser. Clark eLearning support techs have tested such free services and although there are many with great usefulness, we prefer one called Dropbox for its ease of use, student-centric features, and compatibility with Blackboard. There is some risk of confusion between the Digital Dropbox within Blackboard and the Dropbox in the cloud, but once you experience both, the differences should be clear. We only have this warning… View Full Article »
Tag Archive: Assignment Tips
There are many students new to Blackboard who are augmenting their education by developing important computer skills. Knowing how to open, create and submit appropriate file types for various documents can be a marketable asset worth learning. Instructors will usually specify what file types they can accept, which you must adhere to when submitting your work. Some common file examples for documents would be .doc or .docx, .pdf, and .rtf.
Using the right program is the first key to achieving the correct file type… The second key is clicking File and Save As (not Save) and selecting the specified file type before naming your file. View Full Article »
Many Blackboard users have experienced problems when submitting and viewing text that has been pasted directly from Microsoft Word into Blackboard. The cause of this issue is the accompanying word processor formatting code that is included when using the copy/paste feature. These codes should be removed prior to pasting into a Blackboard text box.
One trick is to copy and paste your text from Word into NotePad first, which strips out the fancy formatting. Then copy and paste that more compatible NotePad text into the Blackboard text box editor and use the formatting tools available in Blackboard to style your text. Some will just attach a Word document to their post, however, there are many students that don’t have Word and they will not be able to view your attachment. A few users have reported success when saving the Word text as HTML (website) code, but that isn’t recommended for beginners.
There is a problem with special characters… No, not your Uncle Floyd, but those unique characters that you might use in a file name (like # or &, etc.). In Blackboard, some of these special characters are reserved by the system as operator commands and are considered illegal characters for users. If you attempt to submit a file (like an assignment) using one of these illegal characters in the file name, you’ll likely receive an error message and your assignment will not be submitted. The illegal characters you should NOT use include #, &, $, @, /, \, !, ?, %, ^, *… you get the idea (the list is long and includes most special characters).
