Orientation – UBlearns - Transcript
Welcome to the University at Buffalo’s Graduate School of
Education. We are glad you can join us and hope you find this
orientation helpful.
In the next few minutes you’ll learn more
about the procedures and processes here at UB as well as the
services that are available to you as a student.
In this
segment, you’ll learn more about using UBlearns, our online
course management system.
Let’s take a look!
UBlearns is the UB online course management system.
powered by Blackboard.
UBlearns is
You can access UBlearns at
http://UBlearns.buffalo.edu or via MyUB.
It’s at UBlearns that
you’ll find your online course materials including syllabi,
assignments and course documents.
It’s also where you’ll
communicate with your fellow classmates. You will need internet
access and your UBIT name and password to get logged into the
system.
When you visit http://UBlearns.buffalo.edu, you will see a
landing page that looks like this.
This is where you can get
help, view UBlearns updates, and log in.
you will need to click “user log in”.
To get to your course,
You’ll see UB’s standard
log in page requesting a UBITname and password. You received
information about obtaining a UBITname and password earlier in
this orientation.
After you’ve entered your UBITname and
password, click “log in”.
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This takes you to the UBlearns
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Orientation – UBlearns - Transcript
landing page.
It’s here you will find quick links to courses,
the libraries and My UB.
Home, Help and Log Out.
On the right you’ll find links to
On the left hand side of the screen,
you will find updates and announcements about UBlearns from the
UBlearns support team.
your courses.
On the right hand side you will find
You may need to wait until the first day of
classes to access your course. You can check the UB academic
calendar in MyUB to find the date.
Once your course is
available you are ready to get started.
You’ll click the course name to view the course materials.
You
are now logged in to a UBlearns course- let’s see how this
works.
You’ll notice we still have the same navigation options
on the top bar.
Toward the middle of the screen is your course
banner, this identifies the course that you are logged into.
Below the banner are announcements.
instructor, check in often.
course menu.
These are updates from your
On the right hand side is your
These are the buttons you use to access your
courses tools and content.
UB sites look similar, but the
instructors have the option to customize their courses, so you
may find a few differences between the sample we are viewing and
your actual course environment.
The features you are viewing will still work the same way.
When
I click the “course information” tab it’s going to open up a
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Orientation – UBlearns - Transcript
page with information about the course, in this case, the
syllabus and information about the instructor.
When I click “discussion board” I am taken to the discussion
board area.
It is here where you will grow your understanding
of the course topics by sharing your ideas and collaborating
with others.
forum.
The page is set up like a typical discussion
There’s a link to each discussion forum, an indicator of
the total number of posts for each forum, an indicator of the
number of posts you have yet to read, how many classmates have
participated in this discussion forum to date.
Other display
options and buttons are at the discretion of your instructor so
they may look similar but slightly different from what is
displayed here.
To participate in the discussion, click the
forum link, this takes you to a new forum page.
At the top,
you’ll see the forum title, then below the thread names and
hyperlinks.
It’s these hyperlinks that you’ll click on to view
the content posted by students and instructors in your course.
Each post is time and date stamped; the author is the person who
created the thread.
There may be additional posts within the
thread by other classmates or instructors.
You’ll also see an
indicator of the total unread and the total posts in each
thread.
You’ll follow your instructor’s directions for
participating in the discussion board.
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To start a new
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Orientation – UBlearns - Transcript
discussion thread, simply click “thread” near the top left hand
corner.
To read or participate in the thread, simply click the
thread title. Clicking the hyperlink title opens the content of
the post. You can read the content of the post and see
information about the posting itself.
will be listed here in list format.
The responses to the post
To participate in the
discussion thread, click “reply” that opens your “reply to post”
window in which you can enter your response in the text box.
sure to follow your instructor’s guidelines for posting.
Be
If you
need to attach a file to your posting, click under section 2
“attach a file”.
Once you’ve checked over your post you are
probably ready to submit.
Remember though, that because of
default settings in UBlearns, you will likely be unable to
change your posting once it’s submitted.
You will want to
carefully proofread and spell check before submitting.
If
you’ve been working on a post but are not quite ready to submit
it, click “save” that saves your post, keeps it private to you
and still makes it available to for you to come back, finish it,
and submit it later on.
And that is discussion boards.
Back to our main course page in UBlearns you will notice that
there also some other links along the left hand side.
you will find other helpful course tools.
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Its here
Under tools for
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Orientation – UBlearns - Transcript
instance you’ll find the “Digital Drop Box”.
This is where you
can submit your assignments to your instructor electronically.
Be sure to follow your instructor’s directions on these
submissions.
It is also here that you will be able to create a
homepage, view the full user manual for UBlearns, and view your
grades.
The “communication” link has tools to help you communicate with
your instructor and your fellow classmates.
It provides you an
alternative way to access announcements, discussion boards,
group page and collaboration tools.
It also gives you a built
in way to send email to you fellow classmates and instructors.
Let’s take a look at the email capabilities.
send an email to the instructor.
Let’s for example,
Through the “communication”
button I’ll simply click “send email link” then choose who I
want to send the email to.
In this case, I will send an email
to all instructor users. Making that selection calls up in email
form.
I simply fill out the form to send my email, when I’m
done I click “submit”.
My email is automatically addressed to
the instructor or instructors for this course, it also puts a
special subject header into the email message alerting the
instructor that it is a question about the course.
Many
instructors look at these emails first.
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Orientation – UBlearns - Transcript
If you have questions that are specific to your course content,
those questions should be directed to your instructor.
However,
UBlearns technical questions should be directed to the UBlearns
support team.
UBlearns is a centrally managed and supported
service here at UB.
Your first resource for technical questions
about UBlearns is actually the UBlearns help link.
Most
commonly asked student questions are listed here or you can
access UBlearns even before you log in to UBlearns.
Once at the
UBlearns help page, click the link on the left for students.
You’ll find information here on things like browser
compatibility and resolution to common problems.
If you have a
software compatibility issue, remember that as a UB student you
have access to the UBlearns software.
You can download this
software from the UBIT help page at http://UBIT.buffalo.edu.
visit our on campus computer store UB MICRO.
or
If you have a
technical question that wasn’t resolved by using the help from
UBlearns feel free to contact the CIT helpdesk.
This is located
online at http://helpdesk.buffalo.edu, by email cithelpdesk@buffalo.edu or by calling 716-645-3542.
We hope this segment on UBlearns has been helpful, we’ll see
you again soon!
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