Use of learning management systems

The City University uses Blackboard as the standard platform for distance learning applications. As such it has a dedicated, trained and proficient professional support staff as well as trove of resources on how to support students with disabilities. We ask that in this time you make full use of it and the features it has to support student learning for our students with disabilities.  

Other platforms may not be able to be properly supported by the college or have adequate privacy protections that are compliant with FERPA laws. The use of other learning management systems is therefore discouraged.

Your Blackboard sections: Every for-credit class in the CUNY system has a section automatically created in Blackboard. Both you and your students are automatically placed in the roster and you, as the instructor, have access. While the class is automatically created in the system the instructor needs to make it available to the students. 

You can access the Blackboard system and your class sections by logging in through the BMCC website with your CUNYfirst credentials.

Teleconferencing

The videoconferencing features available through BMCC provide you with powerful tools for live interaction with your students. They allow you to use live images and participant voices as well as the ability to integrate audiovisual materials and prepared presentations. The college supports Blackboard Collaborate Ultra which is integrated into the Blackboard system. 

• BMCC also supports Zoom Professional as a separate application with college issued accounts. 

• Please use them instead of other products as we can provide training and technical support to both you and the students. 

• As mentioned earlier Blackboard Collaborate Ultra is part of the licensed Blackboard system available to you in every class section. You will need to add it to your class tools before you can use it but once you do this it will be available to you and all your students.

• The professional license for Zoom is accessed with the same BMCC credentials that are used to access your e-mail. Please only use the college’s professional Zoom account when using this service.

Participation

While Collaborate and Zoom are powerful tools they do pose a challenge for students with disabilities. We ask you to do the following things to insure they can participate adequately.

• Blackboard Collaborate and Zoom support the recording of the conference session. We ask that you record the conference and share the file with the students who require the accommodation and the persons assigned to assist them. This allows for the student in need of accommodation to view the conference later and for their support person to better scaffold the student experience. 

• We ask that when teleconferencing you enable any closed captioning or transcription features available and allow for private chat between the student and their helper.

• Both Zoom and Collaborate allow for participants to participate using telephones as well as the computer for audio. Please activate this feature and provide the students with the phone number.

• If there is a live ASL interpreter we request that you make sure they have an active video window even if the other participants are not visible.

• If you are using a pre-made presentation such as a Powerpoint or other such materials that will be shared we ask that you consider providing a copy to the student and their support person prior to the class if possible and if not afterwards. To enhance the usefulness of the materials to the student we suggest you save them in the Adobe Acrobat format and that large font point sizes and high contrast be used for easy readability.

Additional testing accommodations

• Some of your students may have certain special accommodations for exams in addition to extra time such as access to a reader, assistance of a scribe, use of a calculator and a spell checker. These accommodations remain in place even if the class is an online.

• In a fully online environment we may need to develop additional means to accommodate the needs of students in a technologically constrained environment, such as submitting work as an image rather than a text. 

• If you are doing a test that isn’t timed or that takes place at a specific point in time all you need to do is provide the support person with access to the test if one is assigned. If the student does not have a support person assigned or if the test is timed we ask that you take that into account. 

• Technical support: We know that support for our students means that we need to support you. The e-Learning team and Office of Accessibility are here to provide you with technical support as needed and look forward to helping you. Please be in touch and we will facilitate technical support and training. 

CUNY Accessibility Training Videos

These videos are recordings of an accessibility training held 3/22/18 for Central Office content developers. They contain information on making your website and documents compliant with accessibility guidelines.

Module 1: Introduction (7 minutes)  

Module 2: Accessibility at CUNY (4 minutes)

Module 3: Assistive Technology (24 minutes)

Module 4: Guidelines (12 minutes)

Module 5: Guidelines and Website Accessibility (27 minutes)

Module 6: Multimedia (15 minutes)

Module 7: Documents (PDF, Word, PowerPoint and Excel) (13 minutes)

Module 8: Testing Tools/Workflows (3 minutes)