Collaborating and Communicating in UTSOnline

The main tools supporting collaboration and communication within UTSOnline are listed below. You will find links to more in-depth support for each tool within its description.

Announcements

You can view important messages from instructors in the My Announcements module or through the Announcements tool. Announcements are often one of the first areas you see when accessing your subject. When you click an announcement link, you are taken to the main Announcements page. where you can view all announcements made. You may also receive an email with an announcement, depending on how the announcement has been set up.

Blogs

The Blog tool is an online space for you to communicate to all people in your subject. Each blog entry you make can include any combination of text, images, links, multimedia, mashups, and attachments. Blogs are an effective means of sharing knowledge and materials created and collected by a group in the subject. You can post new entries and add comments to existing blogs.

Learn more about creating blog entries at the Blackboard Support site 

Calendar

The Calendar displays a consolidated view of all your institution, course, subject, and personal calendar events. You can view events by day, week, or month. You can view and organise upcoming and past events into categories. Access the calendar from your Global Navigation dashboard (My UTSOnline homepage).

Discussion boards

The Discussion Board is a tool for sharing thoughts and ideas about subject topics. Some discussion boards are for informal sharing and communication with your peers, others may be more formal and participation is linked to marks. You may access a discussion board from either the subject menu or a subject area.

Learn more about posting and replying 

Email

The Send Email tool in a subject is a send-only tool. You can send messages from your subject to subject members’ external email accounts without having to launch your external email program, such as Gmail or Yahoo. You can send emails to individual users or to groups of users.

Learn more about posting email from Blackboard support 

Journals

The Journal tool is a personal space for you to communicate privately with your instructor. You can also use a journal as a self-reflective tool to post your opinions, ideas, and concerns about your subject, or discuss and analyse subject related materials. For example, you can describe problems you faced and how you solved them. Instructors can direct journal entries to be more formal in nature and narrower in focus by listing topics for discussion. The journal can also be used with a group.

For guidance on using and editing a journal, visit the Blackboard support site 

Wikis

The Wiki Tool provides an area where users can collaborate on content. Users within a subject can create and edit wiki pages that pertain to the subject or a subject group.

Instructors and students can offer comments, and instructors can grade individual work.

To learn more about using Wikis access the in-depth guide at Blackboard Support 

A.nnotate

A.nnotate is an online commenting software that has been integrated into UTSOnline (Blackboard) to help students with their readings. It is a collaboration and indexing system for documents and images supporting PDF, Word and other document formats.

IMPORTANT: A.nnotate does not work with the Safari web browser on Mac computers. All other supported browsers will work with A.nnotate. Please see the Known Issues page for more information.

The following link opens a file describing the steps required to access A.nnotate via UTSOnline. A.nnotate Instructions for Students

Campus Pack Tools

You may be using the Campus Pack blog, wiki, journal or learning space. Learn more about Campus Pack from  Campus Pack page.