Blackboard Login and Enrollments
Hamilton-Specific Issues
Using any web browser, go to the “My Hamilton” portal and log in as usual. Your courses will be listed on the Courses tab under “Current Courses.” Previous (or future) courses are listed under the semester-year sub-menus; just click on them to expand. Courses labeled “inactive” are still accessible to instructors.
If you have any trouble logging in to My Hamilton you can go directly to Blackboard at https://blackboard.hamilton.edu (there is usually a direct link to this page in the browser toolbar favorites). Use your Hamilton network username and password to log in. For example, if your email address is jsmith@hamilton.edu, you would log in using the username jsmith and your current password. Your courses will be listed in the “Courses” section of the initial Blackboard page.
There can be several different reasons. First, you must use your Hamilton network account name and password, even if you do not use Hamilton email. If you want email sent from Blackboard to go to another email account, you must set up forwarding in the Hamilton web mail interface. Contact the Help Desk (315-859-4181) for help in doing this. If you are a new faculty member or employee, you must have a Hamilton email and Colleague ID in order to log into Blackboard. If you do not have or are not sure if you have these, please contact Human Resources for a Colleague ID and the Help Desk for an email account. In addition, only active employees can access Blackboard; new faculty will not be able to access Blackboard until after the start of their contracts (July 1 for full-year appointments, August 1 or January 1 for one-semester appointments).
If the attempt to log in to Blackboard fails ten times in a row, then a temporary lockout starts which will last one hour. We suggest that you contact the Help Desk for assistance in changing your password if you are not sure what it is. Again, this should be the same as your email and network login.
For Hamilton users, you should use your network username and password. If you have forgotten your network password, please go to Forgotten Password Page to request it. There is no separate password for Blackboard.
All enrollment information in Blackboard comes from the Registrar’s system. Only the Registrar’s Office can change your enrollment status. First, check your enrollment information in the Academic Planning system. If that information is incorrect, you must contact the Registrar’s Office to get it straightened out. Once your Academic Planning records are correct, it may take several hours for Blackboard to correct its records. (The update to Blackboard happens twice daily.) You may also be enrolled in a course in Academic Planning but not see it in Blackboard because the professor has set the course to be unavailable temporarily; in that case, the professor must make the course visible again.
This may happen if you are a new faculty member and the Registrar has not yet been notified which courses you are teaching. Please contact the Registrar’s Office (or have your department chair or secretary do so) and notify them of your teaching assignment. Once your Academic Planning records are correct, it may take several hours for Blackboard to correct its records (the update to Blackboard happens twice daily).
Please see the instructions here for information.
Note: if another instructor is team-teaching your course, you should call the Registrar’s office and ask to have this instructor added as the secondary instructor for your course. This information will then transfer from the Registrar’s system to Blackboard.
Next semester’s course spaces are created as students register for courses (April for the fall, November for the spring). You do not need to ask for a course space; course spaces are created automatically every semester, using the Registrar’s data. Students and faculty are automatically enrolled in or assigned to courses, again, based on the Registrar’s data. Courses are initially set to “unavailable” so that they may be accessed by faculty but not seen by students. Approximately two weeks before the start of the semester, courses will be reset to “available.”
Students have access to courses from about two weeks prior to the beginning of the semester to about four weeks after the end of the semester.
Faculty have access to courses in their My Courses list for 2-3 years. After that time, course spaces are archived, but can be restored if needed (email blackboard@hamilton.edu with your request, including semester/year and course number). Course archives are stored indefinitely. Regardless of the age of the course, most attached files (Word documents, Powerpoint, Excel files, PDFs) will restore without a problem. Other parts of the course (discussion board, blogs, tests, pools) should restore without issue, although this is not guaranteed. Student assignment submission files may not be available after students have graduated.
In addition to regular course spaces, we also provide course spaces for departmental and other uses. The departmental spaces exist for all departments and programs. Faculty are automatically enrolled as instructors based on their departmental and program affiliations.. Students are enrolled in these spaces based on their declared concentration as recorded in Academic Planning; if a student has a double major, then that student is enrolled in both spaces. Minors are enrolled in these spaces also.
All the students enrolled in the departmental/program spaces can be seen in either the Roster (Tools area) or Users list (Users and Groups sub-menu in the Control Panel area). In either area, pick the “Not Blank” option to see the complete list of students (and faculty in the Users area). One can send e-mail to everyone in the departmental space by using the “All Users” option on the Send Email page; to all students by selecting the “All Student Users” option; or to all faculty by selecting the “All Instructor Users” option.
It may be more useful, however, to contact students by class years (status). All the students are also enrolled in class-year groups, which can be seen on the Groups page (from the Users and Groups sub-menu). You will notice that there are groups here for every class year whose students can declare a major and also for minors, by class year. These groups are maintained and updated automatically as students declare or change their concentrations.
You can see who is in each class year group by clicking on the group name. Majors are in the “Concentration” groups and minors are in the “Minor” groups. To email the students in any single group, click the menu button next to any group name and select the “Email” option. On the following page, click the “Select All” button and then click the right-pointing arrow to move the selected students to the “Selected” box.
You also might want to send an email to all majors and minors of a given year. Go to the “Send Email” function (from the Tools page) and pick the “Select Groups” option. Pick the groups ending in the same year and you will be sending e-mail to every student in the selected groups.
Of course, all users have access to all the other tools in a Blackboard course space, such as posting documents, discussion boards, blogs, etc. These spaces are for departments to use as they see fit (e.g., sharing syllabi, listing courses which meet specific requirements, etc.).
Last updated: March 23, 2018
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