Blogs in Blackboard

Blogs are public journals students can update individually, as a group, or as a whole class on Blackboard. All blogs are available for viewing and commenting by those enrolled in the course, but individual and group blogs can only be written by the person/group they are assigned to.

Creating a Blog

• To create a new blog, go to Control Panel > Course Tools > Blogs and click the Create Blog button.

• Give the blog a Name and provide Instructions (or a description).

• Set the Blog Availability- Yes if you'd like the blog to be available for viewing and editing immediately, or No if you wouldn't like it to be available yet.
• If you would like to, set any Blog Date and Time Restrictions. This will customize the date and time of availability for the blog.
• Choose the type of blog you would like- Individual or Course. An Individual blog will create a blog for each student, where a Course blog will create a blog that can be updated by anyone enrolled in the course.

• Choose how entries will be indexed, user permissions, and if the blog will be graded and how many points it will be worth.
• Click Submit to create the blog.

Creating a Blog Post

After you have created a blog, you may want to create a blog entry. To do this, simply go to Control Panel > Course Tools > Blogs > blog name and click the Create Blog Entry button at the top of the page.

• Give your blog entry a Title and enter the main content in the Entry Message field.

• If you would like to attach a file, choose either Browse My Computer or Browse Course and select your file's location.
• Click Post Entry to publish your blog post.

Viewing and Accessing Blogs

Here's an example of how a blog post may look in Blackboard:

• As you can see, the blog post will display the date and time the entry was posted, as well as the name, text body, comments and attached files of the post.
• To the right of all posts, you will see information about the blog, as well as options to view different blogs or posts. All of this is displayed in a table like the one shown below:

1. Main information about the blog. Blog name, author name, number of entries (posts), and number of comments.
2. Other blogs that the user has access to. Click on the user's name to visit their blog.
3. Index of all blog posts. Organized by month or week, depending on how the index settings were set. Access all posts in the blog here.
4. Key to symbols that may appear on the table.