You find yourself teaching a hybrid course this semester, and are faced with an enigma. Is there no easy way to create a class list to take attendance when in class and you do not have access to the LMS? Copying them by hand from a computer screen the night before doesn’t seem to be a practical solution.
It doesn’t take a detective to unravel this mystery - there
is an easier way. By going into your
course shell in Blackboard, you can create a class list that can be downloaded
and printed with these easy steps.
- Go to the Full Grade Center.
- From the Work Offline tab, select “Download”
- Select the “User Information Only” feature under data.
- Select Submit
- Press the Download Button and an Excel File will be downloaded to your computer. This may contain sensitive information, so be sure to be careful with this file.
- Open the Download file. Excel will probably give you a warning box telling you that the file could be unsafe because of a file format extension mismatch. This is not the case. It is just reading a hyperlink in the file that no longer points back to your Blackboard shell that would retrieve the students’ last access date.
To continue, press “Yes” and open the file.
You
now have an excel file with a list of your students that are registered for
your course. You can format it to your
liking and print it out. This can be handy if you want to have a hard copy for
taking attendance in areas where you may not have access to internet or do not
wish to open Blackboard.
This is an easy way to create portable class lists.
Now that truth is out, we can rest easy and get back to what is important – teaching.
