Communicate with Students

Blackboard offers a wide variety of ways to communicate with your students. They include:

Tool
Use
Announcements The Announcements section is the default entry point or “front door” for the course Web site. The default entry point can be changed by the Instructor.  It is a place to put those just-in-time announcements to keep students on track during the semester.
Discussion Board

The Discussion Board allows multiple levels of communication between the students themselves and the instructor. Conversations are logged and organized making it easy for the instructor to see who is participating in the discussions. Discussion board questions are initiated by the instructor in both the Manage Groups and the whole class Discussion Board area by creating a forum.
Discussion Board Grader The Discussion Board grader was a Building Block that was added as an enhancement to the Blackboard system. Blackboard has improved the Discussion Board feature to include a grading mechanism therefore the Discussion Board Grader is no longer available.
Send Email Blackboard's send E-mail feature allows students and instructors to send E-mail in a wide variety of ways. Any E-mail sent through Blackboard's Send Email tool will appear in your Shippensburg University Outlook inbox.
Messages The Messages section allows for private communication between instructor and students in each course.  The message section functions much like e-mail, however the messages are accessible only in Blackboard.  Instructors can choose to send messages to an individual student or students, groups, or the entire course roster.

Virtual Classroom

 In the Virtual Classroom, students and the instructor have access to course documents, a white board where you can draw or add text, and the Internet. Students have the ability to ask and reply to questions.
Lightweight Chat The Lightweight Chat is similar to most text-based chat programs and allows communication between the instructor, teaching assistant or guest speaker and the students. Instructors can record and archive chat sessions. Both the Virtual Classroom and Lightweight chat meetings can be archived.