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Instructors > How To...

Blackboard Scholar in Online@UT: A How-To Guide

Blackboard Scholar in Online@UT

Blackboard Scholar is a centrally hosted Web service, customized for education, and fully integrated into Online@UT. It is designed to facilitate social bookmarking in an academic context.

Social bookmarking is the practice of saving bookmarks (online resources) to a public website and “tagging” them with keywords (EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, 2005).

Blackboard Scholar allows you to SAVE your bookmarks online, SHARE resources with other Scholar users, DISCOVER new links, and TAG your bookmarks for SORTING and easy RETRIEVAL from any computer on the Internet.

Academic resources can be shared within a course, across courses, and even across institutions using Blackboard Scholar.

Access Blackboard Scholar in Online@UT

My Scholar Home
Use this page as a personal learning and research tool. To access:

• Press the Scholar tab after you login to Online@UT.
OR

• Select your Course > Course Tools > My Scholar Home.

Scholar Course Home
Use this page to share Blackboard Scholar resources within a course site. To acces, Select your Course > Course Tools > Scholar Course Home.

Getting Started

Create an Account

• Login to Online@UT.
• Click the Scholar tab at the top OR while in a course site, select Course Tools > My Scholar Home link.
• Fill out the form to set up an account. All fields are required.
• You may choose to fill out the details of the profile or you may go back to the Scholar tab.

Note: While this account is fully integrated into Online@UT, Scholar username and password should be different from UT NetID and password.

Install the Bookmarklet Tool

A bookmarklet called “Scholar It!” is a button installed on Internet Explorer or Firefox browser toolbar. The “Scholar It!” button provides a quick way to save bookmarks on Scholar while browsing the web. Click the button as you find interesting and relevant websites, and "Scholar It!" will save them to your Blackboard Scholar page.
To install a bookmarklet:

• Access Blackboard Scholar page and login.
• Select the “Install Bookmarklet” link at the top.
• Enable browser toolbar:
• For Internet Explorer, select View > Toolbars and make sure the "Links" toolbar is checked.
• For Mozilla Firefox, select View > Toolbars and make sure the "Bookmarks" toolbar is checked.
• Unfortunately, Safari does not support this button.
• Install the bookmarklet in your toolbar:
• For Internet Explorer:
• Right click on the link “Scholar It!”, and choose Add to Favorites.
• In the "Add a Favorite" dialog box select "Links" for the "Create in:" field.
• Click Add.
• For Mozilla Firefox, select the “Scholar It!” link and drag it to your Bookmarks Toolbar.
• Click on Scholar logo to return to the main page.

As noted above, this feature is not compatible with Safari.

Import Existing Bookmarks to Blackboard Scholar

If you already have a collection of bookmarks that you would like to share with your students in a course site, you can import existing bookmarks/favorites from your browser into Scholar.

This is a two-step process. First, save your bookmarks from your browser to a file. Second, import this file into Scholar.

Step One:

Save your browser bookmarks to a file.

Instructions for Microsoft Internet Explorer

1. Click File > Import/Export and then Next.
2. Select Export Favorites. Click Next.
3. Choose the folder to export. Select "Favorites" to export all of your Favorites. Click Next.
4. Select "Export to a File or Address" and click the Browse button.
5. Choose to export your files Desktop. By default, the file will be named "bookmark.htm". You can change it if you like.
6. Click Save, then click Next.
7. Click Finish.

Instructions for Mozilla Firefox (or Netscape)

1. Click Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks (Manage Bookmarks in earlier versions of Firefox).
2. In the Bookmarks Manager window, click File > Export.
3. By default the file will be named "bookmark.html." You can change the name if you like.
4. Click Save.

Instructions for Safari

1. Click File > Export Bookmarks.
2. By default the file will be named "bookmarks.html" and saved to your Desktop. You can change the name if you like.
3. Click Save.

Step Two:

Import the bookmark file into Scholar.

1. Log into Scholar.
2. Click on Settings in the upper right of the Scholar page.
3. Click on Import Bookmarks.
4. Click "Browse" and select your saved bookmark file from Step One.
5. On the Tags line you can enter any tags you wish to be added to all the bookmarks you are importing.
6. Choose how to handle duplicate bookmarks. If an imported bookmark already exists in your Scholar bookmarks, you can replace it with the imported bookmark or ignore the imported bookmark.
7. Click on Import.