Queen Mary, University of London

VLE Blackboard CE8

Blackboard CE8 (formerly ‘WebCT’) is the College’s centrally supported virtual learning environment (VLE).

Any member of staff at QM can make use of Blackboard. It can be accessed from any computer with a web browser and an internet connection. We now have over 800 online course areas on Blackboard being used across the College in a variety of different ways ranging from simply making lectures notes available online through to course areas which actively support collaboration between campus-based and distance learning students.

Our Description of Service can be found here.

What can I do with it?

There are a large number of ways in which Blackboard can be used. These are just a few examples of what you can do with the tools provided:

  • Put learning materials online
  • Create discussion forums for your course allowing students to interact with each other and with you
  • Create and distribute podcasts
  • Create online quizzes, surveys and self assessments for students
  • Allow students to submit courseworks online and release grades and feedback to them
  • Allow students to keep online journals which can be shared with other students or kept private
  • Create “voice messaging” boards
  • Keep students informed about important events through course announcements
  • Create chat rooms to provide students with a forum for online collaboration
  • Create a library of links to useful resources on the web and allow students to add to these when they find something useful themselves
  • Hold an online seminar using a chat room and a shared whiteboard
  • Create an image library
  • Provide your students with an area to create an e-portfolio of their work
  • Have a course calendar to allow students to keep track of important events and deadlines

What are other people doing with it?

The following are some specific examples of the types of things people around the College are doing with Blackboard:

  • Providing chat rooms and discussion boards to allow students to work collaboratively online to prepare for seminar presentations (School of English and Drama)
  • Recording students giving presentations and then putting them online for peer review (Educational and Staff Development)
  • Publishing “screencasts” of lectures to aid student revision (School of Business and Management)

Getting Access

You access Blackboard from http://www.elearning.qmul.ac.uk.

If you have a College email address then you already have an account. You log in to the VLE with the same credentials that you use to access your College email (your computing username and password, which is your electronic identity at QM).

However, just being able to log in to Blackboard doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to see anything on it; you must be enrolled on courses to be able to see them, either as a student or a member of staff.

To request a new blank course area, to send a query or report a problem, or read more about how to use the VLE (as staff or student) visit our extensive support site.

Support Overview

We (the Distance and E-Learning Unit) oversee the VLE across QM, and report to the Learning, Teaching and Assessment Committee and the Information Services Board on VLE matters. We are responsible for recommending upgrades, changes, for doing evaluations, all the course and user administration, the user support and the development of staff and students who are interested in using the VLE effectively. Our key area of expertise is the latter – we have strategic responsibility for enhancing the quality of the service offered to students through the VLE, and to that end we work closely with staff to help them ensure the VLE is a valuable educational tool. The test, production and application servers, the database and of course the network infrastructure are all maintained by IT Services.

There are regular VLE service announcements on this site, which also appear on the log in page of the VLE.

We answer any queries sent to us via the online form within 2 working days, and usually within 24 hours (College closed days excepted). Do, though, consult the extensive guides and online movies about using the VLE before asking a how-to question.

Finally, we offer face-to-face training in the use of the VLE (see ESD’s course booking system).