Service Summary | Getting This Service | Training | Availability | Policy | Additional Information |

Service Summary

Blackboard Courses provides a secure login system and tools to create and administer face-to-face and online courses. Some of these tools include discussion forums, student group areas, text-based and real-time chat, a gradebook for securely distributing grades to enrolled students, and assessment tools for administering quizzes and exams.

Course Folders:

All course folders are automatically created based on Faculty Assignments in Patriot Web. You will not receive a course folder in Blackboard until you are listed as officially teaching a course in Patriot Web or officially registered for the course.

Student Rosters (faculty only access):

Student rosters are updated for you. When students add/drop from Patriot Web, the changes are reflected in Blackboard Courses.

Getting This Service

Faculty

Courses are created during the first two weeks of registration to give faculty the opportunity to develop their courses before the semester starts.

All Users

All Blackboard Courses users log in via mymason.gmu.edu. The username is the same as your Mason NetID. The password is the same as your Mason email account.

Training

Blackboard Courses workshops are held periodically—sign up for these workshops at workshops.gmu.edu

Walk-in assistance is available at the Collaborative Learning Hub lab.

Availability

Blackboard Courses is available 24/7. Any outages will be announced on the Alerts & Bulletins page.

Policy

All users of the George Mason University network must adhere to University Policy Number 1301: Responsible Use of Computing.

Additional Information

Join the Blackboard & Instructional Technologies Collective

The Blackboard & Instructional Technologies Collective is a team for Mason's faculty and staff instructional technology users to communicate with their peers and discuss new features, best practices, and other topics of interest pertaining to the following ITS-supported tools: Blackboard, Kaltura, Poll Everywhere. This is not intended to replace submitting an issue via the ITS Support Center. The collective is moderated by members of the Mason community and ITS.

Submit an ITS support request if:

  • It is something that requires an urgent/timely ITS response
  • You are requesting information or troubleshooting assistance

Post in one of the channels if:

  • You would like to share a use case or feature you’ve found helpful
  • You would like to test out a new feature with your peers
  • You would like to know how your peers are using the tools

To become a member of the Blackboard & Instructional Technologies Collective, go to https://go.gmu.edu/bbteams.