Governors State University - An Illinois Public University
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Center for Teaching and Learning

Course Guidelines

To ensure a smooth and efficient process for fulfilling your requests, the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) has established clear guidelines. These guidelines are designed to benefit both you, our valued faculty and staff, and the dedicated CTL team. By familiarizing yourself with these protocols, you can help us understand your needs more precisely, anticipate potential challenges, and streamline communication from the initial request to the final delivery of our services. This collaborative approach allows us to allocate resources effectively, manage timelines realistically, and ultimately provide you with the highest quality of support for your teaching and learning initiatives.

    Blackboard Shell

    Shells for all GovState courses are automatically created for the new semester, approximately several weeks before classes start. If your course is not listed in your Blackboard Course List but is listed in the GovState Class Schedule, please contact Blackboard Support.

    Blackboard Course Size Limit

    Since Governors State University moved Blackboard to the cloud at the beginning of 2022, there is a total course size limit of 3GB, with a course package size of 2.5GB (course copy or course import) for all courses within Blackboard. This will help ensure that our servers run efficiently and we remain below our allotted server space.

    Faculty members may receive a warning or error message when trying to copy or import a course larger than the default course size limit. You can find instructions on how to check the current size of your course.

    1. Checking Course Size
    2. Identify and Delete Duplicate Files
    3. Create Web Links to Video files
    Retention

    Recordings:
    Panopto and Class Collaborate recordings are retained for a period of 5 years. After this five-year window, any recordings exceeding this limit are removed. Similarly, Microsoft Teams recordings have a shorter retention period of 180 days. To ensure you do not lose access to important course materials or lectures, it is crucial to download your recordings at the end of each term. If you wish to retain Microsoft Teams recordings beyond their scheduled removal, you must upload them to Panopto for long-term storage. 

    Courses [NEW]:
    Beginning June 1, 2026, a new policy for Blackboard course retention will be implemented. All Blackboard courses will be retained for a period of 5 years. The most recent four years of your courses will be readily accessible on the New Learn server. The fifth year of course data will be moved to an archived state, meaning it will still be available but may require a specific retrieval process. It is important to note that any courses older than this five-year window will be permanently removed from the system. Please plan accordingly to save any essential course content or data you may need beyond the specified retention periods.

    Adding a Teaching Assistant to a Blackboard Course

    FERPA:
    To be in compliance with the university FERPA policy, the student will need to complete the FERPA process according to the instructions below.

    FERPA Completion:
    Complete the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) training for students to receive a higher level of access within Blackboard. Teaching Assistant access will be provided pending approval from the director/unit head, chair, or dean. Before training, consult with your superior regarding the required position access.

    Steps to Complete:
    Step 1: Both students will need to complete FERPA training to receive a certificate. They should make sure to save the certificate to their device.
    Step 2: The Instructor will need to complete the DocuSign form for each student. This form requires the FERPA certificate, which each student can upload once they have completed the training and is their turn to sign the DocuSign form.
    Please make sure the form is completed start to finish without long lapses of time. If no activity for longer than a week, the form will be cancelled.

    Accessing Other Instructor Course Content

    We require an email approved by a department chair, department head, or dean to blackboard@govst.edu, providing the specific user (first name, last name, and username) access to the specific course ID (i.e., ONTL-1000-01_26SP).

    Cross-Listing Courses

    Blackboard courses are created from the Colleague course IDs. Once the Blackboard course creation script is run, all of the courses and instructors are added to Blackboard.

    Cross‑listing is the merging of two or more courses or sections into one course shell in Blackboard. This must be approved by the department chair. If the department chair approves, the department will add the cross‑listed courses or sections to Colleague. Once in Colleague, the cross‑listed course will be created in Blackboard when the course creation script is run.

    Request for Additional Shells

    Every course section will have a Blackboard course shell created. However, some circumstances may require you to have an additional shell provided for course building and not for live course use. Instructors may request any of the types of shells listed below but will need to provide chair or dean approval. Please note that these types of shells are separate from the non‑academic course shells mentioned in the next section below.

    • MASTER: (Master shell will remain for online only)
    • HB-MASTER: (Hybrid Master shell only)
    • F2F-MASTER: (Face-to-Face Master shell only)
    • DEV: (Development shell)
    Request for "Non-Academic Course" Blackboard Shell

    Blackboard course shells may be requested for “academic use” only and are subject to approval by your department. Please review the guidelines and procedures for requesting course shells for non‑course academic use.

    1. Shells must be for academic use only.
    2. The requester must submit a shell creation request approved by a department chair, department head, or dean that describes in detail how the course shell will be used and its proposed content.
    3. The requester is solely responsible for maintaining the shell. Maintenance includes:
    • Enrollment of all users: The requester must provide CTL with a list of names, usernames, and roles in the course each term.
    • Deletion of users: If necessary, the requester must provide CTL with a list of names and usernames for each term. 
    • Monitoring and updating course content and functionality: This includes monitoring the course shell for appropriate and legal content. 
    • Providing student support for content.
    1. Support for Blackboard courses for academic credit takes priority over non‑course Blackboard shell allocation and development. Development support for non‑course Blackboard shells will be done on a time‑available basis. 
    2. With the exception of accreditation teams, only GovState students currently registered for classes and GovState faculty can be enrolled in the shell(s). 
    3. The course shell cannot contain any embedded multimedia or video. Links to YouTube or other streaming media are acceptable. 
    4. The course shell must remain less than 500 MB in size. 
    5. Script automation (auto‑enrolling students) is not available for non‑course Blackboard shells. 
    6. Enrollments in Blackboard shells are not anonymous. Therefore, Blackboard shells should not be used for confidential information.
    Organizing your Content

    If you would like “quick help” instructions on how to add materials to your course shell, proceed to the Faculty Tutorials page. Otherwise, please request to meet with a CTL Online Instruction Specialist for further assistance.

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