Teaching Tools

Discussion Boards are available in Blackboard to facilitate conversation between staff and students. External discussion tools are also available to embed in your course space.

What does Piazza do? Piazza is a web based discussion tool that facilitates interaction among instructors and students.  You can create a Piazza class within your Blackboard course unit and use the class as a single space to manage communications for your unit. Visit the Piazza website for, information on accessibility, a quick start guide […]

Step-by-step instructions for setting up Piazza for your Blackboard course.

This article offers a comparison between Blackboard assignments and Turnitin assignments, and explains the common features and considerations that might influence the choice of tool.

Turnitin and the Blackboard Assignment tool can be set up to allow any file type. However, only supported file types can be checked for similarity or graded online. Read more about supported files here.

This pages explains how to setup an online assessment using Blackboard to create a test, add questions, and make the test available to students.

This guide is aimed at setting up a Blackboard assignment tool for use in the upcoming exam period. Some of the settings discussed here are specific for the exam context and will not be suitable for a piece of course work.

Microsoft 365 (MS365) combines all the familiar Office applications alongside newer apps such as Microsoft Sway. This page provides some benefits and examples of using MS365 apps in your teaching and learning activities.

There are a number of methods to add groups to your Blackboard space depending on the number of groups required. The short videos below show how to create single groups and group sets, and edit existing groups. How to create single groups in Blackboard Please visit the Create Groups webpage for more information on creating […]

The way that Blackboard integrates with Turnitin is changing. From 30th June 2022 staff will no longer be able to create new Turnitin submission portals via the existing method.