Course Details

Important Course Information:

1. Alerts and Notifications are posted on Blackboard homepage. ALWAYS READ & follow instructions provided to make your online learning experience a positive one. This Blackboard Course must be completed within 6 months of your enrollment. Enrollees that have been inactive for 6 months will be removed from the course.

2. Navigate through this course by clicking on the menu links on the left. Lectures release in order one at a time.

3. Course Design deliberately forces students to listen to every slide and participate in every knowledge check. Using the navigation to reverse to listen to previous slides is possible.  Do not try to use the navigation system to reattempt knowledge checks that have been previously attempted. Do not attempt to use the slide bar or any other navigation tool to try to fast forward through the course.  The Table of Contents area will let you navigate to previously viewed slides only. Do not step away from a lesson and leave it unattended or it will lock. Occasionally there will be slides that are "hidden" from the table of contents.  This is by design and at the decision of the instructor that created the lesson. Do not exit any lesson in this course until complete or it will lock and you will have to request a reset.  The course coordinator issues resets for locked lectures upon email request.  Resets will require students to start the lecture from the beginning. Make sure to include the exact name of the course in your request. After a lesson is complete select the "continue" button before exiting out of the lecture.  Blackboard may take a few minutes to register your grade before allowing navigation to the next lecture. If a student tries to fast forward in any way, steps away from the computer during a lecture for an extended time, closes the lecture without completing every slide and every knowledge check, blackboard will lock the lecture and you'll have to contact the course director paula.c.steven.civ@mail.mil to have it reset.  Once it is reset, the user will be required to start the lecture again from the beginning.  This course is designed to ensure full participation in all lectures.  The course grades will come from the lectures and there are no exams.  If students are cautious about viewing the lectures then no resets will be required.

4. Failing grades not related to computer/technology issues require re-enroll and re-attempt when academic data has been downloaded and course rosters are purged typically (December and June timeframe).  Unless the course specifically states that it is multi-attempt, we kindly ask students to wait for the scheduled course maintenance times to occur and then re-enroll and re-attempt around the scheduled course times.  If your failure was a result of computer or technology issues, please inform the course coordinator. If you received a failure for a lecture and closed the lecture without the continue button, your course will automatically lock. We are happy to assist students that are stuck in-progress, have compatibility issues that prevent the user from seeing exam questions, or have terminal connectivity issues during exams. 

6. Check/Change Blackboard Email settings immediately. Blackboard no longer recognizes AKO email addresses.  You will not receive important course communications or certificates if you do not change your email address. What happens if you don't do it? If you have your AKO address still there, you will NOT receive a course completion certificate when you have completed the course! Go to your name in upper right corner of this page. Click the down arrow. Go to Settings at bottom of page. Go to Personal Information. Go to Edit Personal Information. Change your email address from your AKO address to your @mail.mil address. Hit Submit.

7. Exam difficulties where only one question is displayed is a result of compatibility settings on your computer, please do the following:  Remove army.mil from the compatibility view setting list to get the questions to appear.

8. Error messages sometimes appear because you have too many cookies. Blackboard is greedy.  It requires all of your cookies and cache. Go through these steps exactly - don't skip any steps. If you ever see more than about 200 files when you select view files, that is too many.  Sometimes you have to clear the files a couple of times to get rid of them all and you may need to completely get out of IE and reopen it.

Go into "Tools" then "Internet Options"

-delete history and cookies,

-then under Browsing History select "Settings" then click "View Files" select all and then hit the Delete Key. That deletes all stored cookies.

-Then click the content tab and clear ssl slate (you may need to refresh your browser-depending on which version of IE you have)

9. Certificates are generated by the system and emailed to the account you have associated with your profile within 3-5 business days.

The certificate program only runs a couple of times each week. Depending on where you are in the cycle when you submit, it may take up to 5 days for you to receive the certificate. If you have not changed your email to your @mail.mil address, you will not receive a certificate by email. Your certificate will come from "Kofi Merritt" and may be sent to your junk mail. Keep an eye out for it. If you failed to correct your email address, you may also access from the "My Certificates" module on the Blackboard homepage, by clicking view/download to access the certificate.

10. Honor System is used. You are on your honor not to cheat on exams. Cheating means:

-Looking up any answer or part of an answer in a textbook or on the Internet, or using any other source to find the answer.

-Copying and pasting or in any way copying responses or parts of responses from any other source into your online test. This includes but is not limited to copying and pasting from other documents or spreadsheets, whether written by yourself or anyone else.

-Asking anyone else to assist you by whatever means available while you take the exam.

-Copying any part of the exam for any reason. (Not even if you are experiencing an error in Bb- we do not need "proof" to provide a reset, Bb records your progress in the course and instructors are able to determine if there was an error without screen shots.)

11. Technical difficulties may require you to contact course coordinator: paula.c.steven.civ@mail.mil Office hours 0600-1530ET.