One of the really great things about Blackboard is that it’s mobile responsive. This means that if your students are accessing their courses through a mobile device, Blackboard adjusts the dispay to maximise the student’s ability to interact with their courses. But this also means that the screens they are seeing might be a little different than what you see on your computer.
One difference that seems to be causing some problems for students is that the navigation menu often collapses to the left side of the screen in the mobile view. This is a great feature, allowing more visibility of announcements, coursework, etc. But for a student accessing the course for the first time, it’s a little confusing because they might not know what to do next!
Students using a mobile device to view their courses in Blackboard might see something like this:
Blackboard does have an app for mobile users that your students can download and access at no cost. For instructors, there’s also Blackboard Instructor, also downloadable at no cost. And if you have an iPad, Blackboard also has an app called Bb Grader that instructors can download free.
If you choose to continue without the app, students can touch the Show Course Menu button (circled in the image above) to expand the navigation panel so that they may see and access other areas of their course. The button above the Show Course Menu button allows access other areas of blackboard, including Courses & Organizations, OC Student section, and the Global Navigation menu.
If you are using a desktop/laptop computer, your Blackboard course display might look a little different, especially if you are viewing on a display that is not maximised to full screen, is zoomed to a larger/smaller percentage, or possibly if you have other settings variations. In that case, you might see something like this:
Notice in the image above that the course navigation menu is not visible. Instead a blue (or grey) bar appears on the edge where the menu would be. Click that blue or grey bar to expand the course navigation menu.
Another issue that we are seeing is that on some devices (even laptops!), the display looks like what you might expect to see on a mobile device, and might have a sort of shadow menu.
In this situation, the menu you can see the menu items that allow users to access other areas of Blackboard faintly showing over the top of the screen, partially obscuring the Announcements heading. Each of the light grey menu items in Image 3 above is a clickable link that could extend the complete width of the screen. When attempting to click the Show Course Menu button, the user is actually clicking the My Blackboard button. Unfortunately you cannot always see this ‘ghost menu’!
If a student tells you that they cannot see the menu, cannot access their coursework, or every time they click a button Blackboard sends them someplace unexpected, the problem could be one of the situations above.
How can you help your students?
Here are some suggestions to help you help your students when they encounter this:
- Ask them if they’re using a handheld device or computer
- If it’s a handheld device suggest that they look for the Show Course Menu button (the little arrow in Image 1), and click that.
- If it’s a laptop or desktop, suggest that they look for the vertical blue or grey bar on the left side of the screen (circled in Image 2) and click that.
- If they’re using a computer and don’t see things as in either of the images above,
- Ask them to make sure their screen is maximised.
- Ask them to make sure that the browser’s Zoom feature is set to 100%.
- If none of that works, ask them to make sure their display resolution is at the recommended setting for that computer. They can do this by following these steps (for a PC/Laptop):
- Access Control Panel
- Select Display
- Adjust Resolution
- Make sure that the Resolution is at the Recommended Setting that computer. (See Image 4 below.) NOTE: This will vary based on the computer/display!
If none of that works, connect with us in OC Global! We are happy to help!