Requesting Courses - Frequently Asked Questions

Each semester, you need to perform the course request process in the Blackboard Faculty Tools to match your course to the appropriate student roster. The result will be a course that contains enrollment but no materials. Course materials can be copied from another course using Course Copy.

While some institutions automatically create all courses for their faculty, NIU uses this request process for 2 reasons:

• You are able to choose which courses you want to use in Blackboard. For some courses, such as thesis/dissertation sections, you may not want to use Blackboard. This keeps your Courses page less cluttered.
• You are able to choose to combine some of your courses. If you are teaching two sections together, such as a course offered at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, you can combine those into a single Blackboard course. This simplifies your course management (e.g., you only post announcements, files, etc. once for both sections) and allows your students to interact with one another (e.g., shared discussion boards). 

Yes. You may request Blackboard courses for all your semester classes using the Blackboard Faculty Tools (BFT).

Your department office has to enter you in MyNIU as the instructor of record for the courses you are assigned to teach. Please contact your department office to make this assignment in MyNIU. After the assignment is processed in MyNIU, you will be able to request the courses using the Blackboard Faculty Tools (BFT). Note: It may take up to one business day for the course to be listed in the Blackboard Faculty Tools.

It also has to be within 100 days from the start date for you to be able to request a course. This is to ensure that the schedule is finalized and minimize the risk of one faculty member from starting to build a course that is then assigned to someone else.

If you have students under your supervision who are working on a thesis, graduate project, dissertation, or an independent study and you’d like to use Blackboard Learn to facilitate the work, the best method is to ask your department to set up a section of the associated course in MyNIU with you as the instructor of record. Often, these courses are scheduled with a single section under the department chair, but that limits your ability to use university resources, like Blackboard, to work with your students.

If your department creates a section for you, then students can register directly to your section of the thesis, project, dissertation, or independent study course. You will also be able to request a course in Blackboard, like you would for a more traditional course.

It is recommended that the department create course sections for each faculty member in the department for each of these types of courses, every semester. This will automatically allow any faculty member to request the Blackboard course for those purposes. 

Courses are available to request in Blackboard anytime within 100 days from the start of the semester, but not prior.

Also, it takes 12-24 hours for Blackboard to synchronize with MyNIU. If you were recently assigned to the course in MyNIU, wait 12-24 hours for the Blackboard Faculty Tools to update with that assignment. 

If you requested a course prior to its start date (e.g., requested a course in July that starts in August), then the course will initially appear on the Upcoming Courses tab of the Courses page. The default view is Current Courses. You can navigate to the upcoming semester using the arrows at the top of the Courses page or by using the Current Courses drop down menu.

If you requested a course after its start date, you may need to refresh the Courses page a few times to clear your browser's cache.