Blackboard On-Campus: Information for Faculty and Students

Information for Faculty & Students

On-Campus Blackboard Help: bbhelp@uml.edu (answered during business hours) or call 978-934-HELP (4357) and select option 3 for 24-hour assistance. This line is for Blackboard assistance for fall and spring undergraduate courses (hybrid, virtual, and in-person).

GPS (Graduate, Online, & Professional Studies): email onlinelearning@uml.edu (answered during business hours) or call 800-480-3190 for 24-hour assistance. This line is for Blackboard assistance for fully online, winter, summer intersession, and all graduate courses (hybrid, hyflex, virtual, and in-person).

Help Desk: help@uml.edu or call 978-934-HELP (4357) and select option 1 for faculty/staff or option 2 for students. This line is for all non-Blackboard-related IT questions including resetting your password. 

Login Problems - Set your password retrieval security questions at the UMass Lowell Mypassword website to reset your password anytime including after hours. If you forget the answers to your security questions, you will have to contact the IT Service Desk (see Help Desk information above) during normal business hours.

Please note: You will need to log into Service Now with your UML credentials to view some of the following links. 

Blackboard Access Forms (TAs, LAs, Graders, & Secondary Instructors) - Teaching Assistant (TA) access forms are initiated by faculty. Learning Assistant (LA) and Grader forms are initiated by students and approved by the instructor of record. These are DocuSign forms that are sent to the Office of the Registrar to add the roles to SiS and Blackboard. Only the Registrar's Office can add and remove people from Blackboard courses.

Attendance App - Both faculty and students use the Attendance App. Faculty can use this app to take attendance in a class by presenting a four-digit code to students. 

The Blackboard Learn App - The Blackboard app can be used by both faculty and students. There is no fee or subscription needed to use the app.

Communication in Blackboard: Faculty use the Announcements, Course Messages (a.k.a. Mail), and the Email Tool in Blackboard to communicate. When an instructor or student sends course messages or mail, recipients will receive these internally within the course only. Users can receive notifications when they have new messages. The Email Tool allows Blackboard users to send emails from Blackboard to the recipient’s UMass Lowell email account. The email messages are not stored in Blackboard. Faculty can send announcements or course messages if they want to store messages in Blackboard. To make sure you get your messages, log in to Blackboard and Edit your Notification Settings. 

More Information for Faculty

Blackboard Course Setup  (Content, Merging, and Availability) - Empty Undergraduate course shells are automatically created for all courses including non-traditional courses; competency, dissertation, independent study, internship, and thesis courses. Non-traditional courses will not automatically be made available. You can make your course available, copy content from a previous semester, or request a new course template for any on-campus courses on the Blackboard Course Management website. 

Grade Center - Faculty can post grades and feedback for students and have Blackboard calculate final grades before importing to SiS.

Grade Center with SiS: - Faculty can pull Blackboard final letter grades into SIS.

Attendance Tool - The Attendance Tool in Blackboard will keep track of student attendance and calculate their grade throughout the semester. As long as this column is unhidden to students, they will be able to see what their score is for this column. There is no way to import attendance sheets or connect this tool to the Attendance App. All attendance entries must be done by hand. 

Ally - Ally is an integrated tool in Blackboard that you can use to assess the accessibility of your documents. More information on the Blackboard Help site.

Center for Excellence in Learning & Teaching (CELT) Workshops - Sponsored by CELT, Graduate, Online & Professional Studies (GPS), and Information Technology (IT). Workshops are held throughout the year but the primary schedule is held during summer and winter breaks.

Workshops and Training by Academic Technology and IT  - Sign up for a workshop, training, demo, or information session provided to you by various departments in IT. 

Academic Technology Team 

Donna Mellen, Director of Academic Technology; email: donna_mellen@uml.edu

Mac Wishart, Principal Instructional Technologist; email: matthew_wishart@uml.edu

Leeanne R. Porta, Senior Instructional Technologist/Designer; email: leeanne_porta@uml.edu

Schedule a Blackboard, Academic Technology, or Course Design Consultation - for Faculty and Staff only