If you could
not find your problem, please check the ITL
Blackboard CourseInfo Student FAQ or download the CourseInfo
User Manual of CourseInfo (pdf document).
How
can I access additional CourseInfo information?
As
a student, you do not need to have a Blackboard CourseInfo account in order
to view the on-line manuals and support pages for the system. By visiting: http://blackboard.uic.edu
you can easily click on links to the Blackboard Support pages, the Student Frequently
Asked Question Page, and the Blackboard Student Manual.
In
addition, these pages have valuable information regarding Blackboard system-wide
policies. In most cases, if you are having trouble with CourseInfo, the documentation
and information in these publicly available resources would instruct you of
exactly what to do in order to solve your problem.
Return
to Top
How
do I log in to a CourseInfo website?
-
-
When
the Blackboard CourseInfo Login page loads up, type in your Netid as your
username. Your Netid is the first part of your UIC email address, before
the @ sign.
Please only use lowercase letters when entering your username. Next, navigate
to the Password box and type in the last eight digits of your social security
number. (If you have previously used CourseInfo and changed your password,
use this new password instead.) Do not use dashes or hyphens when typing
in your social security number.
Please Note: For users with CourseInfo accounts prior to July 26, 2000 your
default password is your netid. Do not confuse the password for CourseInfo
with your computer account password. Unless you have reset your CourseInfo
password to match your computer account password, they are usually not the
same.
You are automatically assigned a netid when you register for a class. By
convention, student netids are of the form "fnnnnn##", where "f" is the
first letter of your first name, "nnnnn", are the first five letters of
your last name, and "##" is a number. The netid is also the same as the
first part of your university email address. To search for your netid go
to the UIC Homepage, http://www.uic.edu/, and click on the Phonebook link
at the top of the page. Next, type in your last name. If all goes well,
your name and netid will be listed in the results. An example of a UIC netid
is, jsmith1.
-
My
Blackboard Homepage will come up. On the right side of the screen, click
on the course that you are enrolled in. Your class homepage will come up!
-
Sometimes
the University CourseInfo server goes down or it is overloaded, cause the
page load process to fail. Please be patient and try again.
-
Return
to Top
Can
I Preview a course without being enrolled for it?
A few CourseInfo course sites can be previewed as a guest, permitting
visitors who are not enrolled in the course to access certain materials and
features. To access a course as a guest please follow these steps:
-
- Click on Course Catalog
- Click on Preview
- Click on Public
Health
- Click on a course link
Return
to Top
Why
can't I log in to CourseInfo at the moment?
You may just be
using the wrong username or password, check to see if that's the problem. Remember
that your username is the same as your net id, and your default password is
the last eight digits of your social security number(without the dashes). If
you have forgotten your password, you will have to contact your TA or Instructor
for help. They will be able to reset your password. However, if you are certain
you have your username and password correct, there may be a problem with the
CourseInfo server.
Use the following
page to determine if this is the case. http://www.uic.edu/htbin/accc/monitors/sysman/upreport.pl?service='CourseInfo'
In the event of
a server failure you may report it using one of the following options:
Emergencies: 312-413-8080
Non-emergencies: Contact the CSO at consult@uic.edu or 312-413-0003.
Return
to Top
I've forgotten my password, what should
I do?
If you've forgotten
your password, you will have to contact your Professor or TA. They will be able
to change your old password to a temporary one. We recommend having your password
changed to your netid. Once this has been done, you should go through the steps
outlined below to change the temporary password to a password of your choice
Return
to Top
How
do I change my password?
You can change
your password using the password changer tool located in the Personal Information
section of CourseInfo. From the My UIC page, click on the Personal
Information link on the Navigation Bar located on the left hand side of
the screen.
Click on the Change
Password link from the Personal Information page.
To change your
password, enter your new password in the first textbox. Then, enter it again
in the second textbox below to verify that it was entered correctly. Finally,
click the submit button to process the changes.
Return
to Top
How
do I send email from CourseInfo?
The ability to
send email through CourseInfo is dependent on whether or not the feature has
been enabled by your instructor. From the main My UIC page, you'll find
a link labeled Send Email. Click on it.
The next page should
contain list of courses that you are currently participating in. Simply select
a course from the list, and you'll be transferred to the Send Email page
for that course. From here, depending on how much access your instructor has
allowed, you can send email to:
1. All Users
2. All Groups
3. All Teaching Assistants
4. All Instructors
5. Select Users
6. Select Groups
Once you have selected
one of the six possible email options, you will be sent to the main screen where
you can enter the email subject and message body. If you want a copy of the
email sent to your address, select the check box labeled "Send Copy
of Message to Self".
You can also add
attachments using the Add button. Next, select the file to attach, you
can either browse for the file using the file browser dialog window, or type
in the full path into the textbox. Hit the Submit button to upload and attach
the file to your email. The browser will return to the Send Email page,
which will now have a list containing all the files you've attached to the email.
You can always remove a file by clicking the Remove button located next
to the file name.
NOTE: Remember
to be considerate of your recipients, and don't send unusually large files without
informing them of your intentions. The Send Email feature should be used for
course purposes only. Do NOT send messages for any other reason.
Once you have completed
preparing your email, click the send button to email it to your recipients.
Return
to Top
How
does the Digital Drop Box work?
The Digital Drop
Box is a tool designed for you, the student, to send files and documents to
our instructor or TA. The two main features of this tool enable you to:
Add a file
to the Digital Drop Box online file storage space.
Send a file to your instructor or TA
When you add a
file to the Digital Drop Box, the file is uploaded to the CourseInfo server.
The file is time stamped using the current time on the server, so you may notice
that the date and time stamp may not match that of your computer.
Please note: When
you use Add a File your files are NOT sent to the instructor. You will
have to use Send File to do this.
To actually submit
files to your instructor, use the Send File feature. This can use files uploaded
to the server using Add a File, or you can browse your local drives for the
file to send. Again, the files are time and date stamped using the server's
current time and date. This is an important fact to keep in mind since you may
have an assignment with a certain time deadline. There may be situations where
your assignment may be on time based on your computer's time, but late based
on the CourseInfo server's time - to avoid misunderstanding, it's best to avoid
sending files close to the assignment deadline.
Return
to Top
How
do I check my grades in CourseInfo?
Depending on your
instructor, your course grades may or may not be available on CourseInfo. If
you have an instructor who puts grades online, you can check them via the link
labeled My Grades. Clicking on the link will load a page with a list
of your current and recent past courses for you to select from.
Click the link
corresponding to the desired course. All grades that have been entered into
the system will be displayed on this page. Once again, if no grades have been
entered into the system or, if your instructor isn't using this feature, there
will be no grades to display. In many cases, if more than two weeks have elapsed
from the end of the semester, your grades will have been deleted. One exception
is in cases where your instructor has decided to archive this data.
Return
to Top
Why
can't I retake a quiz?
The ability to
retake a quiz is determined by your instructor or TA. Usually, just like a traditional
pencil and paper quiz, you can only attempt a quiz once. Because of this, do
not try to complete a quiz if you believe you don't have enough time complete
it in once sitting. Likewise, trying to quickly preview a quiz and leaving the
page will mean that you won't be able to retake it.
Return
to Top
How
do I review a quiz without losing my grade?
If you've already
taken a quiz, but want to review your answers, you can click on your grade in
the Check Grades Section. This will let you compare and check your submitted
answers, without overwriting your current grade. Don't go back to the quiz,
because your quiz scores will be reset to zero as soon as you do this. This
is especially important if the quiz has been enabled for multiple retakes.
Return
to Top
How
do I modify my CourseInfo personal homepage?
By default, your
personal homepage is blank. You may choose to customize it further, using the
forms on the page that loads when you click "Edit Your Homepage" in
the Tools Section.
This page has three
main sections of content that you may fill in. The first is the intro/personal
information section. This is where you enter basic info about yourself and some
bit of personal information about yourself. For example, you may want to talk
about your likes and dislikes, major, hobbies and more.
Next, you can select
an image that you'd like to display on your page. To upload a new image, click
"New Image" This will pop up the file browser dialog, where you'll
be able to select the image you want to upload to the server.
Finally, you can
enter in a list of your favorite websites. The three components of this subsection
are.
- The site title.
This is the name of the site that you are linking to
- The site's url
Enter the URL of the site you are linking to here. For example http://www.uic.edu/sph/cade
- The site's description
This is where you can enter brief information or details about the site.
Return
to Top
I
don't have PowerPoint or Word on my computer, how can I view these documents?
Microsoft has free
downloads of PowerPoint and Word viewers available online. You can download
them from:
PowerPoint Viewer:
http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2000/Ppview97.aspx
Word Viewer:
http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2000/wd97vwr32.aspx
Return
to Top
What
are PDF documents and how can I view them?
PDF is short for
Portable Document Format. As the name implies, this is a file format designed
to be a universal file format for the electronic distribution of documents.
Its ability to preserve fonts, formatting, and graphics across multiple platforms
make it a popular format for document distribution. You can download free Acrobat
Reader software at:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
Acrobat Reader
is also included in UIC's NSKit.
Return
to Top
Why
is CourseInfo so slow at the moment?
Due to occasionally
heavy demands placed on the CourseInfo server, the system may slow down at certain
times of the semester. This is relatively uncommon, and your best solution is
to return at a later time. Slow response from the CourseInfo server may also
be the result of a poor Internet connection, or heavy traffic on your dial-up
ISP. Try accessing other web sites to determine whether the bottleneck is occurring
at your end or at the UIC server.
Return
to Top
