The Office of Academic Technology and Digital Innovation is dedicated to supporting faculty with comprehensive educational technology solutions, including Blackboard and a diverse range of digital learning tools.
Our services include:
- Professional development workshops and training sessions
- Personalized one-on-one consultations
- On-demand resources and support materials
Explore our full range of services and resources at https://hartford.edu/actech.
In-person workshops will be held in the Woods Classroom, Harrison Libraries unless otherwise noted. Virtual workshops will take place on Microsoft Teams.
Join us for our fall 2026 professional development offerings. To register or learn more about upcoming sessions, please contact us at actech@hartford.edu.
Blackboard Basics
New to Blackboard or looking for a refresher? This workshop provides an introduction to Blackboard's core features and tools. Learn how to navigate your course, upload content, communicate with students, create assignments, and utilize the most commonly used course management features. This session is ideal for faculty who are new to Blackboard or who would like a review before the semester begins.
Sessions:
The NEW Gradebook
Blackboard's newly redesigned Gradebook offers a more streamlined and flexible grading experience. In this session, you'll learn how to navigate the new interface, manage and organize grades, create calculations, use grading workflows, and provide timely feedback to students. Whether you're new to Blackboard or transitioning from the previous Grade Center, this workshop will help you make the most of the updated tools.
essions:
Mission: Accessible – Simple Steps to an Inclusive Blackboard Course
A quick-hit checklist to ensure your course materials work beautifully for everyone. Now that your Blackboard course is built, let's make sure all your students can access it without a hitch. This low-stress session cuts through the compliance talk to give you a straightforward, high-impact checklist you can apply directly to your site. You will learn how to spot and fix the most common hidden formatting traps in your files, add quick descriptions to images, and ensure your links are clear, leaving you with a bulletproof, fully accessible Blackboard environment.
Sessions:
Microsoft Education
Microsoft Education is a comprehensive suite of digital learning tools and services that integrate seamlessly with Learning Management Systems like Blackboard to enhance teaching and learning experiences. Through the Microsoft 365 LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) integration, faculty can access powerful collaboration tools, assignment creation capabilities, and AI-enhanced learning accelerators directly within their Blackboard courses. The platform includes tools for real-time collaboration, video meetings, file sharing, AI-powered assignments, and learning accelerators—all designed to create more engaging, personalized learning experiences without requiring students or faculty to leave their familiar Blackboard environment. Think of it as bringing the best of Microsoft's educational technology directly into your existing course structure, making it easier to collaborate with students, create interactive assignments, and track learning progress.
Sessions:
The Blackboard Course Blueprint & Tune-Up: Building & Polishing Your Course)
Whether you are starting from scratch or refreshing a copied course, learn how to organize your learning space to save time and keep students on track. A well-structured Blackboard site means fewer panicked emails from confused students and a much smoother semester for you. This comprehensive session focuses on mapping out your weeks or units logically using modules and built-in AI tools, setting up assignments clearly, and organizing your layout. You will also learn how to update due dates at once, fix broken links, and spot legacy formatting traps so your content is clean and accessible before the first day of class.
Sessions:
AI Magic: The Ultimate Toolkit for Spellbinding Course Design w/Blackboard
Wave your wand and let AI work its magic! This spellbinding session unveils Blackboard’s AI Design Assistant for effortless quizzes, assignments, rubrics, and visuals, plus the AI Roleplay tool for immersive, interactive learning. Save time, spark creativity, and enchant your students with AI-powered tools that make course design feel like wizardry. Join us and add a little magic to your teaching!
Sessions:
AI Magic: Gemini NotebookLM
Join us to explore Gemini's NotebookLM, an AI-powered research assistant that transforms how you work with documents and sources. Upload PDFs, articles, notes, and other materials to create a personalized AI that can summarize content, answer questions, generate study guides, and help synthesize information across multiple sources. Perfect for research projects, course preparation, literature reviews, and collaborative analysis. We'll cover practical applications for both teaching and research, including how to generate podcast-style audio discussions from your materials and create interactive study resources for students.
Bring your laptop and a few documents you'd like to experiment with!
Sessions:
AI-Powered Roleplay: Enhancing Engagement in Blackboard
Unleash the potential of interactive learning with Blackboard’s AI Roleplay tool. This workshop explores how to design dynamic roleplay scenarios that promote student engagement, critical thinking, and real-world application. Learn to create immersive simulations and adaptable role-based activities that bring course concepts to life. Whether you're teaching case studies, fostering collaborative problem-solving, or preparing students for professional interactions, this tool empowers you to craft impactful learning experiences. Recommended: Completion of Blackboard Basics training.
Sessions:
Getting Started with Kaltura
Kaltura works like an in-house YouTube, allowing faculty to upload videos to a media library quickly and easily, then link to them from Blackboard and other websites. Faculty who are flipping the classroom, teaching online, using video clips in instruction, or working with student video projects should plan to attend this special information session about Kaltura. altura Capture is a simple, convenient tool that can capture your voice, the action on your computer screen, and webcam video to create lecturettes. You can use it to record audio podcasts, video lectures, or narrated presentations and demonstrations. his session will guide you through the process of recording a narrated screen capture, editing it, and publishing it to Blackboard. Video and audio files should never be added directly to Blackboard; instead, instructors should be using Kaltura. f you require a 1:1 assistance to set up Kaltura, email actech@hartford.edu, and we will be happy to arrange either a face-to-face or virtual appointment.
Sessions:
AI Project Fridays: Bi-Weekly Co-Working Lab
Ready to move from theory to practice with artificial intelligence? Skip the traditional lecture and bring your actual course materials, syllabi, research projects, or workflow ideas to this bi-weekly drop-in lab. Whether you want to draft discussion prompts, build custom AI agents, explore AI-enhanced research workflows, or experiment with course design assistants, this session gives you protected time to create with peer support and instructional technology guidance right by your side. Bring your laptop, grab your lunch, drop in for all or part of the session, and let’s tackle your AI projects together in a collaborative space.
Time: noon – 2 .m.
ocation: Teaching & Learning Space, Lower Level, Harrison Libraries
Fall 2026 Schedule & Dates:
Need a One-on-One Appointment?
f none of our workshop times or topics fit your needs, we’re happy to meet with you individually. Faculty and staff can schedule a one-on-one appointment for tailored support with Blackboard Ultra, course design, Organizations, or other academic technology tools. Appointments are available in-person or virtually via Microsoft Teams—whichever works best for you. Let us know what you’d like to focus on, and we’ll match you with the right team member to assist you. Email us at actech@hartford.edu to schedule your appointment.