Ensure that your Blackboard sites for 2014/15 are ready to use and available to students by the start of teaching. The TEL Help site contains a checklist we have created and contacts to support you with preparing your Blackboard sites before making them available to students. The checklist covers:

• updating staff enrolments and their contact details
• determining and communicating to students how sites will be used
• posting a welcome announcement
• adding and updating content
• setting up any online assessments and Grade Centre
• setting up any discussion forums and groups

Remember that you will need to use a different Blackboard site for each new cohort – you cannot continue to use last year’s site with a new group of students. If you do not have access to a 2014/15 site for a particular module, then you will need to request it yourself online. If you had a 2013/14 site for a module and it has not been copied for use during the 2014/15 academic year, it is likely that the module code has changed – please check this with your course administrator before you request the new site to ensure you use the correct module code.

As well as updating staff enrolments for teaching staff, you will need to re-add external examiners to your module sites. External examiner accounts are created centrally when they are appointed and can be enrolled using the Staff Enrolment Tool.