Northern Illinois University
Teaching with Blackboard
Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center

You can quickly upload resources to content areas in Blackboard using the Item and File tools. Adding an Item and adding a File are very similar. File is used for posting a single piece of content at a time. Adding an Item is more flexible, allowing you to group related files under one heading, as well as adding a description to the file(s).

To Create Items

1. Navigate to a content area
2. Click Build Content
3. Choose Item from the dropdown menu
4. Provide a Name
5. Provide a description in the Text field (optional)
6. Choose Browse My Computer or Browse Content Collection to add file(s)
7. Navigate to the desired file, then select Open
8. Set the availability ("Standard") options (optional)
9. Click Submit



Setting Restrictions

• You can set the availability of a new Item using the Standard Option Permit Users to View this Content. Select Yes or No. 
• You can also make content available or unavailable at particular times using the Select Date and Time Restrictions feature.

Note: if you set the overall availability to No, the Date and Time Restrictions will not function. Instead, leave the overall availability set to Yes, then use Date and Time Restrictions.

Last updated: 07/07/2016