Blackboard Tip
Personalize a Course Shell
By Ireta Ekstrom, PhD, CMU Instructional Developer

A little-known feature of Blackboard is called the Edit View. Most of the time instructors enter their course, click on control panel and navigate to the content area that needs material or editing. However, if you are in a content area already (for example, Course Documents) and want to add something new, just click on Edit View in the upper right hand corner.

When you click on Edit View, several things will happen: 1. The page reloads, 2. You will note that you have all of the controls to add folders, items, course links, tests and external links. You will also see that you have the ability to modify, manage or remove any materials, and 3. The edit view label at the top is now called Display View.  While you are in Edit View you can manage materials using any of the available links and click on Display View to quickly move back see what students will see when they log in.

This can be quite a time saver if you have specific tasks to do in a content area. The tool is available to Instructors, Teaching Assistants, Course Builders and System Administrators.