As an instructor, the Course Manager will be your number one tool for pushing out class content to your students, monitoring student activity, grading student submissions, and organizing your students into separate sections and courses. The Course Manager is where you will see the option to link your course to Blackboard.
How to Access the Course Manager
The course manager can be opened by clicking the triple bar menu on the top right, select utilities, and click “Course Manager.” Once you have created a course, you can use the Course Manager shortcut icon which will appear in the top right of the screen.
A new tab will open and you will be brought to the LabArchives Welcome Page. Click on “Create Your New Course Now” to get started
Note: Anytime you would like to save your progress of creating your course, Click on the option at the top right corner.
Connect your course to Blackboard
If your institution has enabled LabArchives as an external tool for Blackboard, you will have the choice to connect your course to Blackboard. If you would like to link your LabArchives course to Blackboard, select “Yes” and click on next. If you select “No” or “I want more information before I decide”, you can come back and connect your course to Blackboard later.
- Setup the Course Information
- You will need to give your new course a title.
Tip: Be sure to use the same name as the course to be linked in Blackboard.
- The course description is an optional field for your internal use only.
- Select the notebook on which to you want base your students’ notebook. We refer to this as your Instructor Notebook. (For more information about how to set up your course notebook, click here)
Tip: In your Instructor Notebook, be sure to name assignments in the notebook the same as their corresponding assignment in Blackboard.
- In the Course Information area there are 5 additional choices, you are free to turn any of these items on or off anytime in the duration of your course:
- Allow students to share their notebook with other students. This is turned on by default. This is great for collaboration if students are working in groups and you want them to be able to work in each others’ notebooks.
- Allow students to sign pages in their notebook. This is turned off by default. This option freezes the page and will not allow anyone, including the instructor to edit the page any further. Most instructors prefer to use the assignment page locking option listed below instead of this.
- Allow teaching assistants to add or delete sections. This is turned off by default. The instructor can permit teaching assistants to add or delete sections of a course.
- Lock assignment page when the assignment is submitted. This is turned on by default. When students submit an assignment, the page will be locked and they will no longer be able to edit any entries on the page until the page is graded or unlocked by the instructor or teaching assistant.
- Show comments automatically for students and teaching assistants. This is turned on by default. When an instructor or teaching assistant comments on a student’s notebook, the comment will be shown automatically when the student returns back to the page.
- Important Note: We recommend having one assignment entry per page. If you have the locking feature turned on for your course and create more than one assignment entry on the page, students will not be able to submit the other assignment(s) on the same page.
2. Create Sections
To add sections to your course, type in a section name, a description (optional), and then click “Add.” After you create one section, you have the ability to add additional sections, edit current section names and description, and delete sections.
Note: Section information in LabArchives is not carried over in Blackboard or vice versa.
3. Add Teaching Assistants
You can manually add TAs or co-instructors to the course. If your TA is already listed in Blackboard, you do not need re-add them here. TA’s will be added once they have clicked through an assignment in Blackboard.
To add a Teaching Assistant manually, fill in the emails (separated by commas, enters, semi-colons, etc.) in the field, and click “add”. The “Test” button checks if it’s a valid email and if the user already exists in the course. The Teaching Assistants will receive an email with an activation link.
You can assign your TA to a specific section of the course and you can always add additional TAs, change their assigned section, or remove them.
4. Add Students to your Course
Your students will automatically be added to The LabArchives Course Manager once they have clicked through an assignment in Blackboard.
After your students have been added, you can change their assigned section.
Once you are done adding information to your course, click on the “Save Course and Exit” button.
Create or Access other Courses
If you would like to create another course, you can click on “+Add New Course” at the top right-hand corner. To access another course click on the name of the current course and a drop-down menu will appear with other courses.