Tools
The Email provides a way to communicate with students, teaching assistants, and co-instructors within Blackboard. Emails can be sent to individual users or to groups of users within a blackboard course's Sent Email page, Announcements, Grade Center, and Groups.
Discussion Board
The Discussion Board provides a way to manage multiple, long and/or complex conversations. A Discussion Board is generally made up of forums which may pertain to a particular group or course theme. Within each forum, users can create threads, which further organize posts and responses.
Blog Tool
The Blog Tool provides an online forum, diary or journal. An instructor can allow the entire class or selected individuals to access the blog and add new entries and comments.
Wiki Tool
The Wiki Tool lets you create a self-contained, collaborative website within your course site. A wiki is a website that is collaboratively authored by a group of users. An instructor can allow the entire class or groups to add text, graphics, files and links to build the content of the site. The popular site Wikipedia, which is a collaboratively-authored encyclopedia, is one example of a wiki.
Wimba Voice Tool
Wimba Voice is a collection of tools which can be used in Blackboard to allow voice (audio) recording and/or playback "on-the-fly" within a web page. Depending on which tool is being used, students will see a toolbar embedded in a web page allowing them to play back or record and save audio.
Library Guides
The Library Guides button in Blackboard automatically opens a new browser window with a web page created by a librarian tailored for the subject area of your course. In most cases this works automatically, without any intervention by the instructor, and is an added resource for instructors and students.
