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About Blackboard

Blackboard is a tool that facilitates the creation of sophisticated Web-based educational environments. It does this in three ways, by providing an interface allowing the design of the presentation of the course (color schemes, page layout, etc), providing a set of educational tools to facilitate learning, communication, and collaboration, and providing a set of administrative tools to assist the instructor in the process of management and continuous improvement of the course. Blackboard's goal is to provide a set of tools useful for a broad range of teaching methodologies, yet make it easy to experiment with new techniques. Blackboard can be used to create entire online courses or to simply publish materials that supplement existing courses, and requires minimal technical expertise on the part of the developer of the course and on the part of the student.

Faculty can complete and submit the online Blackboard Course Account Request Form to request a Blackboard course shell for use in their course.

For help with Blackboard, complete and submit the Blackboard Support Request form.

Blackboard is entirely web-based, so there is no software to install (other than a Web browser such as Netscape or Internet Explorer) on the computers used by the students or instructors. Requirements are:

• Microsoft® Windows 98 2nd Edition, 2000, or XP and Internet Explorer 5.0, 5.5, or 6.0 or Netscape Navigator® 6.2. x, 7.0, and 7.1 or AOL® 7.0 and 8 .0 or Mozilla 1.5 and 1.6
• Macintosh OS 9, OS X 10.1.x, 10.2.x, 10.3.x and Internet Explorer 5.1 (OS 9.x and OS X 10.1) or Internet Explorer 5.2 (OS X 10.1, 10.2, 10.3) or Navigator 6.2. x (OS 9.x and OS X) or Navigator 7.0 & 7.1 (OS X) or AOL (OS X) or Mozilla 1.5, 1.6 (OS X) or Safari 1.2
• For a full list of supported browsers, visit the Blackboard Supported Browsers website.

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Logging In

1. Open this location in a Web browser:
   http://courses.uark.edu/
2. Click the Log in to Blackboard link and log in using your UARK username and password (same as email).
3. Click the Log in button.
   The myBlackboard screen shows a listing of your courses using Blackboard.
4. Click on the course ID (for example: ANTH 1023) to enter that course's home page.
5. You should now see the home page for your course.

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Firewalls

Many employers and companies set up firewalls as security measures against hackers.  Firewalls provide security by closing certain Internet ports, which disables student access to interactive computer applications like Blackboard.

In cases where students have been given permission to complete school work at their place of employment, employers have requested the port numbers required to modify their network and provide their employees with greater Internet access.  The port needed is the Chat Port: (TCP) 2304.

Domain Name & IP Address: courses.uark.edu / 130.184.5.63

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Course Publishers

Blackboard has been chosen by many of the largest higher education publishers as their tool to build web-based courses to complement their course textbooks. Most notably, Bedford, Freeman and Worth Publishing Group; Cambridge Physics Outlet; Harcourt Higher Learning including Archipelago, Dryden Press, Harcourt College; John Wiley and Sons; McGraw-Hill Higher Education; Pearson Education including Addison-Wesley, Allyn & Bacon, Prentice Hall; Thomson Learning including Brooks/Cole, Course Technology, Delmar, Heinle & Heinle, South-Western College Publishing, Wadsworth; and W.W. Norton are using Blackboard to create online material to supplement their existing textbooks.

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Troubleshooting

Internet Explorer includes a file download notifier that can prevent downloading of files from content pages, attachments, and other areas of Blackboard.

Downloading Files from Blackboard

internet Explorer includes a file download notifier that can prevent downloading of files from content pages, attachments, and other areas of Blackboard.

Disabling File Download Notification:

• In an Internet Explorer window, click on the Tools menu
• Now choose Internet Options...
• Click on the Security tab at the top
• Click on the Custom Level button in the middle of the window
• Scroll down until you find the setting Automatic Prompting of Downloads and check ENABLE
• Click OK, then click Yes, then OK one more time to close the Internet Options window

Install Symantec AntiVirus to check and clean your system of spyware.