Learn With Us

Hands-On Support Lab

Need some help? Want to ask questions about Blackboard? Head to our open labs! You can get answers with no appointment needed. 

Level Up Your Accessibility Studio (LUYA Open Lab)

Join this hands-on drop-in Q&A session on digital accessibility to ask questions, receive guidance, and practical support for making your documents, course materials, and digital content more accessible for everyone.

LUYA: YuJa and Accessible Media

Captions make your videos more accessible and more effective for every student. Captions can help all students stay focused, search video content, and learn more effectively. In this session, you’ll discover how easy it is to add and edit captions to your videos in YuJa. We’ll walk through auto-captioning, quick caption editing tools, and how to share your finished video in your course, all in just a few simple steps. 

Accessibility Fundamentals: PDFs

PDFs are widely used, but they can create significant barriers when they are scanned, poorly structured, or difficult to navigate with assistive technology. This practical session introduces the foundations of PDF accessibility, including how to evaluate the PDFs you use, address common issues, and decide when it makes more sense to revise the source document or share the content in another format.

LUYA: Accessibility Fundamentals: Presentations

Ensuring presentation files are accessible allows all students to make full use of Blackboard Ally to download alternative formats. This workshop will guide you through the steps to create an accessible Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. We will also show you tools to check your current presentation files for accessibility using both Microsoft Word and Blackboard Ally, and show you how to improve their accessibility. Note that this workshop will not address making your live presentation more accessible.

LUYA: Evaluating Online Resources for Accessibility

How accessible are the websites and online resources you share with your students? In this hands-on session, learn simple checks you can perform using your web browser to identify common accessibility barriers before linking to external content. You’ll explore how to check keyboard navigation, zoom and text resizing, color contrast, captions, and other features that affect how students experience online materials. No coding or technical expertise is required—just your browser and a willingness to explore!

LUYA: Accessibility Fundamentals Documents

Ensuring documents are accessible allows all students to make full use of Blackboard Ally to download alternative formats. This workshop will guide you through the steps to create an accessible Microsoft Word document. This includes items such as document structure, headings, hyperlinks, and alternative text for images. We will also show you tools to check your current documents for accessibility in both Microsoft Word and Blackboard Ally, and how to make changes to improve their accessibility.

Blackboard Ally Course Accessibility Report Training

This training introduces faculty to practical methods for identifying, resolving, and prioritizing accessibility issues in their course materials using Blackboard Ally. It highlights common barriers for students, quick wins, and strategies for utilizing the Course Accessibility Report, empowering instructors to make steady, meaningful progress on accessibility without becoming overwhelmed.

There are two versions of this training. One version requires deliverables and can count for PDH. 

Developing Your Course Environment 

Curating your course environment has different requirements depending on modality, but consistency is a common requirement across all of them. In this session, we will discuss the importance of establishing consistency in your course and preparing students for a successful course experience. We will also discuss strategies that you can implement in your course using Blackboard tools and functions. Bring your questions and ideas to discuss with your peers and the instructional designers in Learning Technologies!

Creating Instructor Presence

Creating instructor presence is an important part of developing any course. Specifically, for online and hybrid courses, instructors need to develop different strategies to demonstrate instructor presence. This session will cover the importance of instructor presence, how to create presence before and during the course, and different tools in Blackboard to assist with creating presence in your course.

Importance of Media in the Online Environment

Using media in your online courses can increase student engagement and retention, increase accessibility, and open new options for interaction and assessment. In this interactive session, learn the importance of using media in your online courses, and tools and techniques to produce effective videos and other kinds of media.

You’ll discover how to determine what kind of media to use, benefits of breaking up the text-based environment, techniques for making effective videos, and an overview of helpful multimedia and tech tools integrated in Blackboard.

Providing Feedback within Blackboard

In this session, learn the importance of providing timely feedback to students, and ways to provide feedback using tools in Blackboard. Use Flexible Grading to provide written, audio, or video feedback to student assessments. Use question-specific Automated Feedback in tests or exams for immediate feedback.

You can even automate some feedback to congratulate students on work well done or provide encouragement when students don’t earn a specified score. Learn how to send automatic reminders to students who have not yet reviewed their feedback.

YuJa Lumina Basic Training

What the session will cover:

• Overview of the Browser Capture and Software Capture Studio
• Media Management,
• Uploads
• Creating folders
• Media Details overview
• Overview of basic tools in the Video Editor
• Split tool to cut
• Caption editor
• Embedding Content into a Course

YuJa Lumina Basic Training

What the session will cover:

• Overview of advance tools in the Video Editor
• Overlays
• Enhancing audio tracks
• Adding Video Navigations
• Overview of video analytics
• Overview of video quizzes
• Embedding video quizzes
• review of the Lumina Gradebook

Foundations of Online Teaching – Part 2

Applying the OSCQR Rubric

Geared towards instructors with completed courses, this five-week, hybrid course is designed to self-assess and build on courses, materials, and assessments that are already developed. Using the OSCQR Rubric, participants will evaluate and develop their entire course structure and revise/complete at least two units of work. This course will tackle more advanced topics regarding content development and assessment building. If you have taken Part 1 and wish to take Part 2 without a fully developed course, you can still participate.

This hybrid course is highly participatory in nature, combining practical hands-on learning with engaged discussion and meet twice on Zoom on Thursday at 6 p.m. of weeks 2 and 4.