Blackboard Essentials for Students

1. Go to Blackboard at https://bcm.blackboard.com/. Note: Safari, Chrome and Firefox are the recommended browsers.
2. Click on the BCM Users 
3. BCM Federated login page. Enter your BCM username and password 
4. Click Login.

To enter a course:

1. Click on the course title in the Courses area.
2. When you first enter a course, you will usually be on the Announcements page or course start page. Instructors use this area to post messages related to the course.

The course menu (text links) are on the left side of the screen. Each link takes you to a different area of the course. Please note that the titles and availability of the navigation links can be customized by your instructor so you may have slightly different choices in each course.

There are two browsers, Google Chrome & Mozilla Firefox, that are fully supported by Blackboard and BCM.

Opening the Browser Checker page checks whether your browser supports the most recent release of Blackboard Learn.

For more information about supported browsers visit Blackboard's Browser Support Policy.

If you are trying to enroll yourself in an elective, clerkship or sub-i, or other courses, use the self-enroll option to get enrolled.

To enroll in this course:

1. Log into Blackboard at https://bcm.blackboard.com/.
2. Click on the Courses link in the left menu. [view screenshot]
3. Click Course Catalog in the top right. [view screenshot]
4. Click Browse Categories to see only courses belonging to that category.
5. Hover over the name in the ID column and click on the down arrow button that appears. [view screenshot]
6. Click Enroll. [view screenshot]
7. Click Submit on the resulting page, then Ok. [view screenshot]
8. Click OK. [view screenshot]

The course will appear under Current Courses.

• Students see all Blackboard courses they are enrolled in listed in Courses. This will include past semester courses and courses that have not been made available to students yet.
• Instructors who use Blackboard choose when to make their course available to students. In some cases, they may not choose to make it available until after the first class meets.

Steps You Can Take to Investigate

1. Verify enrollment - Contact the school / your course coordinator to very enrollment.
2. Check for hidden courses in your My Courses list. Log in to Blackboard, put your cursor on the words Courses and click the silver gear icon on the right. Locate the row for the course that you would like to reveal and click the checkbox under Select All. This should restore the view of a previously hidden course. Click Submit to save any changes. 
3. Ask your instructor / course coordinator. If a class appears in your Courses list in Blackboard but the course name is followed by “(not currently available)” you can contact your instructor to ask if they are using Blackboard and, if so, when the course will be available to students.
4. For further assistance please contact the School first.  If further assistance is needed, the school will contact Ed-Tech. 

All email sent from Blackboard goes to your BCM email account.

You can choose the types of notifications you receive and how they're delivered to you. On your Activity Stream page, select the Stream Settings icon to open the Notification Settings panel. You can also access these settings from your profile page. You can control which activity appears in your stream. Select the Stream Notification Settings tab to open the panel. Notifications for due dates, grades, and feedback always appear in your stream.

1. From the Activity Stream in the left navigation, select the cog in the upper right corner of the screen. [view screenshot]
2. On your activity stream's Notification Settings panel, you can choose which notifications you receive about activity in all your Original courses: [view screenshot]
   • Activity stream: Choose which activities appear on your Stream page.
   • Email: If you want to receive email notifications, add an email address to your profile page. Then, choose how often and which activities you want to receive notifications for.
   • SMS: If you want to receive SMS text messages on your mobile phone, add a phone number to your profile page. Then, choose how often and which activities you want to receive notifications for.
   • Push notifications: Messages pop up on your mobile device if you have the Blackboard app for students installed. You can select which notifications are sent to your device.
3. You can choose to receive all or some notifications of a certain type. A checkmark appears when you select all notifications. A dash appears when you select some notifications.
4. Clear all the checkboxes if you don't want to receive emails about the activities in the list.
5. If you haven't added a phone number to your profile page, you won't see any options in the SMS Notification Settings tab.
6. After making your notification selections, click Save.

To learn more about notifications in Blackboard, visit the Blackboard Notifications page

Blackboard courses are created with some of the left menu buttons listed below. Your instructor may have chosen to rename or hide some of these buttons in order to customize their course. These buttons will also vary depending on which school you are in. [View screenshot]

Announcements: Area to post announcements for students. When announcements are posted, the instructor also has the option to send an immediate email message containing the announcement information.

Course Homepage: Area to post contact information about course goals and objectives, faculty information and course contacts.

Course Schedule/Syllabus: Area to post the course syllabus.

(school) Policies and Procedures: School Policies and Procedures for students

Course Content: Area to post course documents and other course activities here.

My Grades: Provides student access to any grades posted for this course.

Student Getting Started: Face-to-face/remote learning guidelines and application instructions 

Discussion Board: This link provides direct access to discussion board forums used in a course.

Assignments: Area to post assignments and other course activities here.

BCM Blackboard Support Center: This blue button at the top of the course page provides 24/7 support and links to support articles.  The send email feature goes straight to Ed-Tech if assistance is needed.

Problem Description
BCM's Blackboard sessions timeout after 4 hours of inactivity. Any work that was done but not saved or submitted prior to the timeout message is unfortunately unrecoverable. Web Browsers DO NOT register typing as activity. If you're typing an assignment, assessment, or discussion submission for longer than 4 hours, the session may timeout when the submit button is pressed. This means that you may lose your work.

Solution
To prevent lost work, create your content in a word processor, and then copy & paste the content into Blackboard. If you are taking a test or working on anything within Blackboard, be certain to save answers as you are working in tests, or click within the application every now and then so it does not time you out.  If you had done work previously, but had not submitted it or saved and left the window idle for more than four hours, any work that was done prior to the timeout message is unfortunately unrecoverable.

DSL users may also experience timeouts set by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). This is not related to Blackboard timeouts. If you need assistance with changing ISP timeout settings, please consult with your ISP.

If you've been logged into Blackboard for a long time, you will get timed out by Single Sign-On (SSO) the next time you log in. If your BCM account is not locked, the next step is to try clearing your browser cache. How to clear browser cache on Windows and on a Mac for different browsers:

• For Windows
• For a Mac

Online Self Help Resources (24/7):

• This website has how-to's for students: Blackboard Resources for Students.
• Visit BCM's Blackboard Support Center which is accessible outside of a course [screenshot] or within a course [screenshot]

Campus Resources:
BCM Blackboard Support
BCM Educational Technology provides Blackboard support for BCM faculty, staff and students.  Contact Ed-Tech by email.

Login Problems
For login problems, contact the BCM IT Help Desk at (713) 798-8737 it-support@bcm.edu.

NOTE: If you have forgotten your password, please contact the BCM Helpdesk (713) 798-8737 or visit https://password.bcm.edu.