NVCC and Blackboard Tools

Email Accounts
You have been assigned a VCCS email address for use in this and other courses that you take through NVCC or other colleges in the Virginia Community College System (VCCS). The VCCS requires that you use this email account for any course-related email communication so that we can insure your privacy as required by law. If you don't know your VCCS email address, go to the Student Email Page.

To log on to your email account and check for mail, click the Student Email tab near the top of this page. Enter your complete email address as your user name. Use the same password as you first used to log onto Blackboard (either the birth date you gave when you registered, or the last 4 digits of your student number). If you need help using the email account, read the Student Email Page.

Discussion Forums
In addition to email, you, I, and the other students in the course will communicate using discussion forums. Discussion forums allow you to post your ideas and comments and read and respond to the ideas and comments of others, without having to be connected to the course at the same time.

To access the discussion forums click the COMMUNICATION button and then click the DISCUSSION BOARD icon. At this point you will be presented with a list of all the discussion forums. Click on the forum that you wish to access. You can then click the subject of any message to read it, click the REPLY button to write a response, or click the START NEW THREAD button to post a new message.

We will use discussion forums for many assignments in this course. There is also an Introductions Forum, where we introduce ourselves, and an Open Forum, where you can ask questions or post comments about anything in the course.

Listservs
One of the tools we'll use to communicate in this class is called a listserv.   A listserv is a program that allows you to email a message to one address that then sends it to the address of everyone who participates in the listserv.  

To participate in the listserv, you must subscribe to it.  At the beginning of each unit, you will be instructed to subscribe to a listserv.  The students participating in it will be working on the same unit as you are.  When you subscribe to the listserv, please send a message to us, letting us know you're now a subscriber and telling us briefly about yourself.

It is another vehicle for communication, and we will be using it to discuss particular points in the works we read.  It's also a place you can go for help.  If you're having trouble with understanding something we read or would like suggestions, ask your classmates through the listserv!  Of course, you can always ask me for help by emailing me directly at

nmctaggart@nvcc.edu

NVCC Libraries
Many of the resources of the NVCC libraries are available on line. See the main library web page at http://www.nv.cc.va.us/library. You will also find links from there to university libraries around the state and local area, and to resources on the Internet.

Blackboard Manual
The software platform that was used to build this course is called Blackboard. Blackboard provides an online student manual that you can reference discussing all the functions in Blackboard. To link to the manual, click STUDENT TOOLS on the left side of the screen and then click STUDENT MANUAL.