Why Use Blackboard: Lecture Archive

Do your students frantically copy down notes while you are lecturing, trying to capture every point you write on the board and every diagram you present to them, however sketchily they can? Although the act of writing probably does indeed increase the likelihood that students will remember some of what you say, it's also very likely that students are getting only a part of what you present. They may ask you to wait while they try to copy down what you've written, or they may grumble to themselves if you move on before they are through copying down every detail.

If you use PowerPoint as a way to deliver your lectures, if you have an outline for your lectures in Word, if you used scanned diagrams as visual aids, etc., you can upload all those documents into your Blackboard course, into a clearly organized content area. (See the related response concerning Content Management for a discussion of using Blackboard to manage your course content.)

You can reassure your students that you'll be uploading your lectures, notes, diagrams, etc., into Blackboard, so that students can pay attention to what you are saying and note down only the crucial details, while not worrying so much about missing something.

For more information about how to add materials into your course, see Adding a Content Item to Your Course and the related tutorial, Adding a Folder to Content Area.

Written by Leslie Harris, originally for the Office of Instructional Technology at the University of Scranton. Revised with permission and adapted to the Bucknell University Blackboard environment. Last revised August 6, 2008.  Please send questions or comments to itec@bucknell.edu.