Summary
Items and folders are the basic content building blocks of a Blackboard site. An Item is any discrete piece of content: it may include text, HTML, images, attached files, and sound/video.
Resources
- Creating Content in a Course Area (help.blackboard.com)
Adding an Item to a content area
An Item can be added to any content area in Blackboard. By Default, content areas are named “Course Information”, “Course Documents”, “Assignments”, “Labs”, etc, but Blackboard allows you to name your content areas whatever you like. Items are the primary method of adding text, images, files, audio and video to Blackboard.
- Go to the content area (Course Documents, etc) that you want to add the item to
- Click the Build Content button and pick Item (all the other options work in much the same way as Items)
- Enter your own name for the Item in the “Name” field
- Enter a description into the Text field.
- OPTIONAL: set the availability (visibility to students) of this item, and any additional settings you require:
- Do you want to make the content visible? – Visible means that your students can see the document. If you want to make the Item visible to students based on more complicated criteria (such as grades, group membership etc), use the Adaptive Release function after creating the Item.
- Do you want to track number of views? – This option lets you track how often individual users view the Item, on what dates, etc.
- Do you want to add metadata? – This option indicates if metadata will be used. Metadata is data about the added item, such as ownership, resource format, and copyright information.
- Choose date restrictions – This option lets you set the dates that the document will be visible and invisible. This automates the “make contents visible” option. If you want to make the Item visible to students based on more complicated criteria (such as grades, group membership etc), leave this section alone and use the Adaptive Release function after creating the Item.
- Click “Submit”.
