Overview
The default Course Entry point (where both students and instructors land after clicking on the course to access it) is "Announcements". The instructor or a Course Admin can change the course entry point, and in some cases, may do this accidentally. This article discusses various ways that the course's entry point can be changed, and in case of an issue, how to reset it manually.
Audience
University Employees
Information
Changing the Entry Point Normally
To manually change the course's entry point, under the course's left menu, within the Control Panel, expand "Customization" and click "Teaching Style":
About halfway down on this page, there is a dropdown for "Course Entry Point". Click this and select the left menu area which you would like to be the "Starting page" for both yourself and your students in the course:
When you have selected this, click "Submit" at the lower right, and next time you and your students access this course, this area will be the first area you see.
The Default Entry Point and Unintentional Changes:
In a typical Blackboard course, the entry point is "Announcements" - when the course is entered, both faculty and students see the "Announcements" page first, regardless of the order that the course's left menu tabs are in.
If the instructor or a course administrator deletes or chooses to hide the "Announcements" area, however, the entry point will default to the next content area listed...
...meaning from that point forward, the entry point will reflect whichever content area is currently listed as the "highest" on the left menu. In the example below, the course's entry point is now "START HERE" because the "Announcements" tab has been made hidden.
In this case, "START HERE" will remain as the default entry point for the course, even if the tab is moved, or "announcements" is unhidden. Most of the time, you can follow the steps for "Changing the Entry Point Normally" to adjust this if you have done this unintentionally. Please keep in mind however, that your desired entry point must be available (unhidden).
Issues with Entry Point being an External Link
Occasionally, when suppressing the Announcements, faculty may run into an issue where there are no more normal content areas in the course, and the next available content area is an externally-facing web link. If this happens, students and faculty entering the course are almost immediately redirected to the external site. If, in the previous example, "Library Databases" was the highest available content area in the left menu when "Announcements" we suppressed, the next time faculty or students tried to access the course, they would be directed to the Library Databases page immediately:
If this or something similar to this happens (where the course's left menu no longer appears), you can access it by clicking at the "Pop open menu" icon at the upper left:
After clicking this, the course's left menu will appear. To change the entry point back to a normal content area, go down, expand "Customization" and then enter "Teaching Style":
This will take you to the page where you can set the new entry point manually. Scroll to the middle, and click the dropdown to select a new default course entry point.
If you continue to experience issues with not being able to access your course's objects and content due to an erroneous course entry point, and you have been unable to remedy this by following the steps mentioned, complete the LMS consultation form to schedule a meeting, or you may reach out to servicedesk@saintpeters.edu for any technical inquiries and assistance needed.