To begin with you will not be using Blackboard for this class. All instructions and information can be found on my web site at: Book of Cels
The home page or starting page of the web site has all the main links on it. Note the picture below and the areas highlighted with the colored lines.
Yellow Arrow The yellow arrow is pointing to the announcement area of the page. Any new announcements will be listed there. Some are specific to your class -- so pay attention to the headers on them.
Pink Arrow The pink arrow is pointing to the links to the individual class pages. You will click on those links to find your class schedules and book information.
Orange Arrow - The orange arrow is pointing to basic links that may be of interest to you. For example if you are in the Web Classes, there is a link to the student web server listed here.
Green Arrow: The green arrow is pointing to a menu that tells you if an assignment is about to come due. It shows assignments by classes that are going to be due within the next 7 days.
Blue Arrow: The blue arrow at the top of the screen is pointing to the LOGIN and LOGOUT links. To submit your homework or access your grades you must login in to the web site. You will do so by clicking the Login Link.
White Arrow: The white arrow is merely pointing to the link back to this web page. It is present on all subsequent pages of the web site.
You get to the class page when you click one of the links on the main page. For example when I click the link for CISW 300, I end up here:
This web page has all the basic information you need for this class including information about Prerequisites and Textbooks. More importantly it has a link on it to the Course Schedule (Yellow Arrow) which has all your notes, assignments, and test information on it. Everything you need for your class work will be found on the schedule.
The class schedule is the page you need to check often as all your notes and assignments will be listed here.
Yellow Arrow: The yellow arrow tells you which schedule you are looking at. In this image I am looking at the schedule for Bus 100.
Green Circle: The area circled in green shows the topic of discussion on any given day as well as any textbook information you need for the class. The date column at the beginning is the day the class meets. In the example on this page the Bus 100 class is actually an online class which means that the Date is indicating the start of that week's subject matter.
Blue Arrow: The blue arrow is pointing to the assignments that are due that week. Some weeks don't have any assignments or test. Please note that the yellow text following the assignment link is the date that the assignment is due. The assignment must be turned in by midnight on this due date. All assignments that are turned in late are worth less points -- I deduct one point per day that the assignment is late.
Pink Arrow: The pink arrow is pointing to all the notes for that week's class session. Some weeks have a large number of notes for you to read; some do not. You are responsible for all the material in these notes. Most of them are written in WORD format (DOC) and can be read simply by clicking them to open. If you do not have MS WORD -- you may download a free program known as Open Office which can open any WORD document for you.
Yellow Arrow:To submit your homework or check your grades you must login to the web site. You do this by clicking the link that says "Login".
Green Arrow: If this is your first time logging in to the web site you must first create your homework account. You do this by clicking the link that says "Create Account". You must be listed in my enrollment database in order to do this -- so if you are adding the class late, you will have to check with me first to make certain you have an account area set up in the system.
Blue Arrow: This is pointing to login screen. You will put in your First Name, Last Name, and the Password that you choose when you created your account. Then click the button to login.
Pink Arrow: If at any time you forget your password during the semester you may click the link that the pink arrow is pointing to. It will email your password to you.
Yellow Arrow: When you click the link on the previous page that says "Create Account", you will be taken here. You must enter your first name and last name as they appear on the admission record for the college (no nicknames unless that is how the college formally lists you).
Pink Arrow: You may pick any password you wish for your account password. Please remember it.
Email Address It is important that I have a working email address for you. I don't care if you use your college email address or your personal email address -- as long as it works. When you fill the form out and hit submit you should immediately receive a confirmation email from my web site that has your account information in it. If you do not, please double check to make certain you entered your email address correctly.
Yellow Arrow: Assuming you have an account and you logged in correctly, you should see something like the image above. I am logged in as "Charlie Brown" on this example page. The yellow arrow is pointing to a list of options you have. Under these options are the topics:
Pink Arrow: If you wish to log out of the web site, simply click the Logout Link.
Yellow Arrow: When you click the Submit Homework link you will be taken to a window that looks like the image. The number of assignments and the types of assignment will change depending on the class.
Pink Arrow: Click one of the radio buttons next to the assignment you wish to submit. Remember they must be submitted in on time. Simply doing the assignment is not enough -- you must GIVE the assignment to me to be graded as well which is what this process is all about.
Blue Arrow: Once you have selected the assignment in question, click the "Select Assignment" button at the bottom of the page.
Pink ArrowNot all assignments are submitted the same way. In this example I am submitting a short writing assignment for my Bus 100 class. The pink arrow is pointing to the instructions that tell me how to complete this process. The Assignment Sheet that you downloaded from the schedule will also have these instructions written on them.
Blue Arrow: For this assignment I have to write the answers to a couple of short questions in the textarea you see on the page. You may type your answers directly or cut and paste them from your word document here.
Green Arrow: Once I have finished writing my answers, I must submit the page by click the submit button.
Green ArrowAfter I hit the submit button I am taken to this page. You should see a confirmation of some sort such as "thank you for turning in the assignment". You can see in this example that while I did turn in the assignment, I turned it in late by 1 day. This note says I have automatically lost 1 point for the late work.
Alternate Type of Assignment The web assignments use the same process as the Bus 100 process, but I'm not turning in answers to questions but rather URLs
Green Arrow: In this example I am submitting a typical assignment from one of my web classes. I have created a web page and published it to the student web server. To turn in the page I must submit the URL so that the teacher may view it. In this case all I have to do is type in the URL to the web page here and then hit the submit button.
Green Arrow: Again, I should get some confirmation note saying that the assignment has been turned in.
Yellow Arrow: Since you are turning in a URL it is important that you check the address. When you get to this page you should SEE YOUR PAGE in the little window here. If you do not see your web page, that means you gave me the wrong URL. I won't be able to see your page either when I go to grade it which means you will get a zero on the assignment. If you don't see your page, go back and resubmit it!
Pink Arrow & Blue Arrow: When you click the Grades link at the top of the page, you will see a page that looks like this. Please note all the information on it. The blue arrow is showing you how many points an assignment is worth in total. The Pink arrow is showing you what you earned on the assignment. Obviously if I haven't turned in an assignment or it has not yet been graded, there won't be any points in this column.
Yellow Arrow: Please read the comments written here before
emailing me and asking me "Why Don't I have a Grade". As you can see from the
note here -- you have obviously turned in the assignment but it says "Teacher has
not yet graded this." That means exactly what it says. I haven't gotten to it yet.
I will eventually grade it. You may have turned in the assignment early -- I won't grade any
of the assignments until they are due (that gives you a chance to make changes if
you wish to.)
You may have also turned the assignment in late, which means I may have
already graded all your fellow classmates' assignments already and have moved on to the
next assignment -- in which case I may simply not have noticed that you have turned
the assignment in late. I will eventually see it. I have a program that points out all these
late assignments to me and I get to all of them eventually.
I may just be running behind -- some weeks I have a very large number
of assignments to grade and I don't get to all of them as quickly as I'd like. Please be
patient.
Green Arrows: This student turned in 2 assignments late. The first assignment was 3 days late, the second assignment was 1 day late. Both assignments were worth 10 points each -- but points were deducted because of the lateness. The assignment that was 3 days late could only receive a maximum of 7 points, and the assignment that was 1 day late, could only receive a maximum of 9 points. Make certain you turn your work in on time.
Pink Arrow: At the bottom of the grade sheet you will see a little chart that shows your OVERALL grade in the class. That little blue bar will grow throughout the semester until it reaches its final location at the end of the semester. Hopefully by the end of the semester it will be pointing to the 'A' on the meter. Please don't ask me at the beginning of the semester why the blue bar says you are getting an 'F'. This is your running total for the ENTIRE SEMESTER, not your current standing in the class. You can see for yourself which assignments are due and how you did on them, so you should know what your standing is already.
Yellow Arrow: The bar graph is simply reading the running total that is kept in the total column. The number of the far right shows how many points are possible for the semester. The number next to it shows you how many points you have earned.
Green Arrow: Some classes require that you post every week to the class bulletin board. Bus 100 for example has a weekly question you must answer on the bulletin boards. By clicking the link that says "Forums" you will be shown the Bulletin Board Link to your class.
Yellow Arrow:This shows the link to the Bus 100 bulletin boards. If you were enrolled in more than one class, all your classes would be listed here. When you click the class link you will see the bulletin boards that are currently available to you.
Green Arrow: As you can see, this week I have two bulletin boards available to me. The green arrow is pointing to the board names. By clicking the name of the board I can open it up and see all the messages posted in it.
Yellow Arrow:The yellow arrow tells me which board I am currently looking at.
Green Arrow: The subject line links are the actual messages that are on the bulletin board. If I wish to read any of them I simply have to click the links and the messages will open up. From there I can reply directly to a message.
Pink Arrow: The link that says "Full View" will expand this screen so that you can see not only the subject lines but also all the messages. That way you can read all the messages on one screen rather than having to open them up one by one.
Blue Arrow: If I wish to start my own topic rather than reply to a topic already posted, I click the link that says "Add New Thread".
If I do decide to click the "Add New Thread" link, I will see a window that looks like this. All I have to do now is type my subject line and my message. Then click the submit button.
Yellow Arrow: Once I submit my message it shows up in the bulletin board. You can see my example message listed there at the top of all the other messages.
Green Arrow: Notice the little white box next to the student's name. You will only see the box next to your own name. This allows you to delete your own messages (in case you made a mistake). You must put a check mark in the box and then hit the delete button that you will find at the bottom of the screen.
Green Arrow: When you actually click on one of those subject lines and open the message, you will see a window that looks like this. You can see all the header information and read the entire message. The green arrow is pointing to the reply button which you will click if you wish to respond to this message. This will take you to a screen where you can type your response.
Green CircleSome classes will have regular online tests for you to take. You open the tests directly from the schedule. All you have to is click the link under the Assignments column of the schedule.
Green Circle: Once you click the test link you will see a page that looks like the image. Please read all the instructions. It is important to understand that once you start a test you MUST COMPLETE it. You can not login to a test and then come back and finish it later. Once the test is opened, it is locked. It can only be unlocked by the teacher -- so if something goes wrong (your dog unplugs your computer, the power goes out, etc), you will have to email me in a timely manner and get me to unlock the test for you. Please note that a 'timely manner' means as soon as possible --- not 3 weeks after the test was due.
Yellow Arrow:To open the test you will put in your first name, last name and password, and then click the Start Test button.
A typical test will look like the one above (only not blurry). You will answer the questions by selecting the radio buttons next to the correct answer. Double check that you answered all the questions and actually CLICKED the radio button. Sometimes you think you clicked the radio button, but you missed. There should be a black dot in the button you selected.
Yellow Circle: You must click the FINISH button down at the bottom of the test page in order to submit the test for a grade. If you do not click this button, you will be locked out of the test and receive a zero on the assignment. You must also complete the test before the allotted time is up. If the allotted time comes due, the test will submit itself and any questions not answered will be counted as wrong.
The nice thing about tests is they grade themselves, so you will see your test score in your grade sheet immediately.
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