The Observer role allows faculty and staff to monitor progress for specific students across all of their Blackboard courses. The Observer role is designed for advisors, academic support coaches, and other support staff.
Fall 2026 Pilot
The Observer role is being piloted in Fall 2026 with support staff from Student Athlete Academic Support Services. The goal of the pilot is to increase the quality of support by providing the staff with more timely information about student progress, while simultaneously reducing the reporting burden for faculty.
Who are the Observers?
Observer access is intended for advisers and support coaches. They are NIU faculty and staff who serve in specialized roles to support student success.
Requirements for Observer access:
- Students must be informed about the Observer role and provide consent to be observed.
- Observers (or their department/unit) must notify faculty teaching any course where a student is being observed.
- Observers must use a separate account for Observer access in Blackboard, to protect student data from accidental access or disclosure.
The Division of IT maintains the associations between Observers and the assigned students.
What Can Observers Access?
Observers are assigned specific students to observe; usually, these are the students the faculty or staff member advises or supports. The Observer can only access information related to these students; they cannot see any information related to students they are not assigned to observe.
Observers only have access to progress information for Blackboard courses that are currently open and visible to their assigned students. They cannot see any information about past or upcoming courses.
The Observer role provides view-only access to student activity data for their assigned students, including:
- Last Access Date: When the student last accessed the course in Blackboard
- Grades tab: Details on a student's earned grades, including:
- Overall Grade
- Upcoming and past due dates
- Grades for individual assessments
- Any exceptions granted to the student
- Progress tab: Provides information on student progress in the course content, including:
- View content (files, Documents, links) that are available to the student
- Completeness and progress indicators for course content
- Course announcements, including whether students read the announcement
What Is Restricted for Observers?
- Observers can only see progress information for their assigned students.
- Observers can only see progress information for current courses that are open to students.
- Observers cannot modify the course in any way, or act on behalf of the student.
- Within a course, Observers cannot access:
- Test questions - they can see the title and due date only
- Student test attempts - they can see the grade earned and when the student submitted the test
- Discussion boards - they can see the title, grade, and due date for a graded discussion on the Discussions tab, but they cannot access any discussion posts
- Content hidden from a student - they can only view content that is visible to the student they are observing