With the latest Blackboard feature, students can see their blackboard files right on their desktop, no visit to the UNH homepage necessary.
The “Blackboard Connection” is the latest feature added to Blackboard 8, enabling students and faculty to handle their online files more efficiently.
The new program makes uploading, editing, and saving files to the Blackboard content section easier. Students are now able to save those files to a folder on their desktop.
Prior to this addition, students have had to access their files through a web interface. Now they can set up their own connection on their personal computers, through which folders and files can be readily accessed on the student’s desktop.
While the program was not formed due to specific requests, students did feel that more space for their files was necessary.
“We did increase the storage available to students from 250MB to 500MB based on support from the student senate in the last year,” said Director of Academic Technology Terri Winters.
“We implemented the Blackboard content connection to make it easier for students to access their files in the content system.”
According to Winters, students and faculty will benefit from this new system.
“It will make uploading, editing, and saving files to the Blackboard content system easier. Students can now just open a folder on their desktop with their files that are stored in the Blackboard content system.”
So far the Information Technology department (IT) is monitoring the number of students and faculty accessing the program in order to gauge its success thus far.
There are no more immediate changes planned for the Blackboard site, but next year an upgraded Blackboard 9 will be introduced.
“IT worked for about 9 months directly with the Blackboard company so that they would fix this feature of Blackboard and it would work properly,” Winters said. “It took some time to convince Blackboard that it wasn't just a UNH problem, but a problem with their software.”
By adding this feature, UNH’s IT department helped other universities as well. “Not only did our work yield a fix for UNH, but other schools that use the Blackboard content system also benefited from UNH's leadership on this problem,” said Winters.
“The staff of IT Academic Technology was dogged in their insistence that Blackboard fix this feature. We knew that this way of accessing files in the Blackboard content system would be easier for students since it worked just like other folders and files that they store on their computers,” she said.


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