Instructor Access to Blackboard Course Shells
Availability of a Blackboard course shell to an instructor is determined by two criteria:
- Blackboard course shells for a future semester are released 8-weeks prior to the start of the semester. All course shells for a given semester are released simultaneously.
- The instructor has been contracted to teach the course and attached to the course in SAP by the Registrar's Office. Individual Blackboard course shells do not appear to the instructor on their Blackboard homepage until the contracting paperwork has been finalized.
Blackboard Shell Availability by Semester
As previously noted, Blackboard shells for a future semester are released approximately 8-weeks prior to the start of the semester. Exact dates of anticipated release for upcoming semesters are:
- Fall Semester: June 1st
- Spring Semester: November 1st
- Summer Semester: March 1st
If an instructor desires to prepare a course running in a future semester ahead of the release of that semester's Blackboard shells, a 'sandbox shell' can be requested through the CMU Help Desk. A sandbox shell is an empty Blackboard shell to which course content can be copied into, prepared, and when semester teaching shells become available, prepped content can then be copied into the teaching shell.
Instructor Access to Blackboard Course Shell
Blackboard course shells appear to an instructor inside their Bb homepage once all hiring paperwork has been completed and the instructor attached to the course by the Registrar's office inside SAP. Should early access be needed ahead of hiring paperwork completion, a request should be made to the department chair and, upon written approval from the chair, a request placed with the CMU Help Desk to be manually added to the course shell [chair's written approval should be included with Help Desk ticket].
Can't Find a Course? If you cannot locate a course you know you are the instructor of, try these steps to locate the course:
- In the All Courses filter at the top of the Courses tab, select Hidden from Me (if this item does not appear as a choice in the drop-down menu, you do not have any courses hidden from your view. Proceed on to the next items to try and find your course). If the course is found hidden from your view, click the 3-dots on the course card and Show Course.
- At the top of the Courses tab, type in the course designator in the Search Your Courses box on the left.
- On the right side, change the 25 per page to 100 per page to display more courses on the screen to you. Sometimes course listings go beyond the standard 25 courses on page to additional pages.
- At the bottom of the Courses tab, scroll through pages to view courses on additional pages.