Getting Around
Successfully navigating your way around the sites and resources required for success in Distance Learning
The Distance Learning website will be a valuable resource for you. Here you will find information about proctors, additional course requirements, important announcements, office hours, instructor contact information, and student resources.
The Registrar's Office is the central hub for student records and information. If you have ever registered for a class at LCSC, you have a student record with the Registrar's Office. Most students know this is the office you contact if you need to add or drop a course, but there are so many other reasons to get to know the Registrar's Office including:
You would be hard pressed to make it through a course, online or face-to-face without having to do some sort of research. The Library has a variety of online resources availalbe to assist students in their researching efforts including being able to instant message with a reference librarian.
WarriorWeb is the student information portal system and it is also the website through which Blackboard is accessed. Whether you are registering for classes, paying your bill, accessing Blackboard or viewing your grades, as a student you will use WarriorWeb for practically everything. Below is a picture of the WarriorWeb student menu. As you can see you will have access to a wide variety of information and resources. Next time you log in to WarriorWeb, take a few minutes to explore the available information. Not sure where to start? Here are some tips:
LCMail is the name of the student email system. Each student at LCSC is given a LCMail email account after registering for their first class. It is this email account that students are expected to use for college related business, and it is this email through which the college communicates with students. Below is a picture of the LCMail Dashboard which, once signed in, is fully customizable. On the far left column you will find important information from Student Services, including Student News and a Student Services Calendar.
This is the ONLY email account through which Distance Learning will communicate with students.
Blackboard is the Learning Management System through which you will access all of your online course content. Each Blackboard course has a course Home Page on the right and a Course Tools navigation bar on the left. The tools located under the Course Tools section are related to your course and contain course content. The tools located in the My Tools section contain information specifically for you. Individual instructors can choose to use all or none of the links located in these two sections.
In the next pages we will review how to navigate within a Blackboard class.
As you saw earlier, Blackboard consists of two main areas, the Home Page and the Course Tools navigation bar. Depending on how your instructor has built their course, you may access content from the home page, the navigation bar, or a combination of both.
Lets focus first on the home page. On this page you see a titile, as well as a variety of icons. Each of these icons represents a link to different course materials. An instructor may put everything on the home page to make navigation easy and streamlined. To access content you can either click on the icon, or the link located next to it.
You will also notice in the top-left corner "Your Location: Home Page." Every time you click on an icon or link, this will change to display your new "Location." We will discuss this further on the next page.
Below is an example of how the "Your location" area looks after clicking on a link directly from the home page. You can think of the links as breadcrumbs, and you can follow them back to where you came from.
The navigation bar is broken up into two areas: Course Tools and My Tools. The tools located under the Course Tools section are related to your course and contain course content. The tools located in the My Tools section contain information specifically for you, such as grades.
As you can see, some tools have a green box with a white asterisk, this indicates new material is available. The menu bar expands and collapses in order to maximize the use of screen space. In some areas like Learning Modules, it will automatically collapse but you can always expand it again if you need to do so. In the collapsed view only the icons are visible.
Please keep in mind all of the tools are shown for demonstration purposes only. Individual instructors can choose to use as many or as few of the tools in their course.
In Blackboard, printing is not as simple as File --> Print. Since course materials are essentially web pages, they require some formatting before you can print.
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