Add Files - Delivery Recommendations

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Overview

One of the many uses of Blackboard is to distribute documents to your students. You may upload and make available to your students any type of file (e.g. presentations, word documents, HTML web pages, spreadsheets, images).

However, there are some files that are easier for your students to view than others. Below is our recommendations on the file types that will work best for your students, thus requiring less of your time in supporting their technical questions.

You may use either a Learning Module or a Course Content folder as a container to display links to your uploaded files and to specific items within the various Blackboard tools. The Learning Module’s advantage is that student activity for these pages can be tracked. The Learning Module can also be more easily sequentially organized.

TROUBLESHOOTING
  • Known Issue: Avoid using special characters ( @ # % & ; ) in filenames and titles. [more info...]
  • Known Issue: Generic Exception-Invalid permissions error [more info...]
 

Which file types should I use?

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Easily Supported File Types
PDF
Portable Document Format
  • Your documents will be delivered the way you intended
  • You can work in the application of your choice (i.e., Word, PowerPoint, etc.)
  • PDF files are smaller in size than their original documents—providing quick delivery
  • Adobe Reader plug-in is Free to download and widely used
  • PDF Creation Tutorial is available for installing the free Microsoft Office 2007 PDF plug-in
HTML
Hypertext Markup Language
  • Only a Web browser is required to view HTML
  • Many applications such as Word and PowerPoint can save as a Web Page
  • You may also use FrontPage, Expression Web, Dreamweaver etc.
ZIP
Lossless Data Compression File Format
  • Zip files are also acceptable for content delivery. They are most often used when you need to deliver a group of folders/files to your students, or if you need to deliver a file type that can not be put online such as an Executable file (.exe). [more info...]

Less Supportable File Types

 
DOC / DOCX
Microsoft Word Documents

PPT / PPTX
Microsoft PowerPoint Presentations

XLS / XLSX
Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet

 Microsoft Office documents require additional support for the following reasons:
  • Your students must own or have access to MS Word. MS Word is NOT free, and does NOT come automatically with most Personal Computers.
  • Compatibility problems for different versions of MS Word can be confusing and cause extra overhead to manage and troubleshoot. Many campus users have upgraded to Office 2007, while others remain at 2003.
  • Doc/Docx files launch differently in different browsers. For example, most people have to find and approve of a security warning on their Internet Explorer browser before they can view these file.
  • Your documents will be easily editable by the individuals viewing them.
Non-Web Ready File You may have reasons for delivering proprietary file types to your students. For example, you may need to give them a specific statistics or GIS application files that they will be adding to. Just keep in mind, your students will need the correct application, and perhaps some additional training on how to download these files.

If you do need to upload these types of files you may need to zip them up to successfully deliver them to Students. See the Blackboard File Manager tutorial for assistance in this area.

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