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For those of you new to USC, welcome to the Trojan Family. For those of you who are returning,
welcome back.
USC uses Blackboard as its campus-wide, online learning platform, and you can access Blackboard
using any modern web browser by going to blackboard.usc.edu or by going to the University's homepage at
usc.edu, clicking ‘popular links', and then clicking Blackboard. Then, click the "Log
in to Blackboard" button.
You can also access many of Blackboard's tools and features on your iPhone, iPad, Android,
Blackberry, or WebOS smartphone or tablet. Just download, install, and open the free
"Blackboard Mobile Learn" app available in your device's app store or marketplace and
then search for and select "USC" or "University of Southern California."
To log in to Blackboard, type your USC NetID and password—the same username and password
you use to log in to MyUSC, USC's email system, and Google Apps. If you ever have problems
logging in, make sure you've entered the correct user name and password, and also make sure
your caps lock is off. If you still cannot login, call USC's ITS Customer Support Center
at 213-740-5555.
Once you login to Blackboard on a PC or Mac, you'll see a box on the right side of the
screen called "My Courses Plus" that can be a bit confusing. USC automatically creates
a Blackboard course for every course at the university. However, your courses won't appear
on Blackboard until your instructors choose to manually "turn those courses on." In other
words, don't be surprised if some or all of your current semester courses don't show up
on Blackboard. That's completely normal. It doesn't mean that Blackboard is broken; it
just means that your instructors haven't chosen to turn on their Blackboard courses yet. If
you know that you are enrolled in a course but that course is missing from Blackboard,
contact the course's instructor in person, by email, or by telephone and ask if your
instructor plans to use Blackboard this semester.
To access a current semester Blackboard course's contents, just click the course's course ID
hyperlink in My Courses Plus. The first four digits in the course ID indicate the year
(like "2012") in which the course is taught and the last digit is the semester: 1 for
spring, 2 for summer, and 3 for fall. So all of your fall 2012 courses will begin with
"20123."
One other thing: Once your instructor turns your Blackboard course on, that course will
remain available to you during this semester and for several weeks afterward. ITS then
automatically disables student access to completed Blackboard courses approximately eight weeks
after the last day of classes. In other words, student access to fall semester courses ends
on February 1. Student access to spring semester courses is disabled on July 1. And student
access to summer semester courses is disabled on October 1. Once a course has been "turned
off," the only person who can "turn it back on" or give you access to the course's materials
is that course's instructor. So, if you want to download and keep a copy of a file within
one of your current Blackboard courses, you should do it sooner rather than later.
Also, if an old course suddenly reappears on your My Courses Plus list sometime in the
future, that doesn't mean that Blackboard is broken; it just means your former instructor
has chosen to make that old course and its contents available to all the students again.
You can ignore that course— you already earned a grade. However, if you have any questions
about why your instructor made an old course available again, or to request that an old
course be made unavailable, contact the course's instructor.
Once you have accessed a course, the easiest way to locate and open content within a Blackboard
course is to click the links on the Course Menu on the left side of that course's home
page. If you do not see a Course Menu on the left side of your course's home page, then
someone has probably accidentally hidden your Course Menu. To unhide the Course Menu, click
the Show Course Menu button on the far left side of your screen.
If you cannot find what you are looking for on the Course Menu, click the Folder View
icon at the top of the Course Menu and then, under Folder View, click Expand All. This
shows you everything in your course. To return your Course Menu to normal, click the List
View button.
If your instructor informed you in class that he or she has posted a file to Blackboard
but you cannot locate that file even in Folder View, please notify that course's instructor
either in person, in class, by email, or by telephone.
Your instructors may also post grades and assignment feedback in Blackboard, although
remember that this is completely optional. Not all of your instructors will do this.
To view the grades that have been posted, on the Blackboard Home tab, click My Grades,
and then click the name of your course. Within a course, you can also click Tools and then
My Grades.
What should you do if you find a grading mistake or have a question about your grade? Contact
your instructor immediately. By the way, how do you view your final grades for a course
– the grades that go onto your official transcript? Those are posted at the end of
each semester on my.usc.edu or in Oasis, not on Blackboard.
Finally, we want to give you a sneak peek at the next version of Blackboard. Over the
winter 2012 holidays, USC is going to upgrade Blackboard to version 9.1 service pack 9.
This new version will introduce instructor-requested improvements to several Blackboard tools.
It is also going to "re-skin" Blackboard to give it a cleaner, less cluttered, more professional
look. The Blackboard tools and course layout you'll use in the fall semester will still
be there and work the same when you come back to campus in January. The only major difference
you're going to notice as a student is that, in 2013, Blackboard is going to have a softer
background and more neutral colors. We'll talk more about this later this semester.
Until then, remember that USC Blackboard help is available to you around the clock by clicking
the Blackboard Help tab at the top of any Blackboard page and then clicking "For Students".
As a USC student, you also have full access to lynda.com, an online training provider
that offers video-based courses on a broad range of computing topics, including Blackboard.
Just click the "log in to lynda.com" button within Blackboard to access these training
videos. Finally, USC's ITS Customer Support Center Blackboard consultants are available
by telephone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Just call (213) 740-5555 and choose option
3.
Welcome to the fall 2012 semester at USC.