Technical Requirements
Many AQ students have never encountered an online course before. They aren't sure what to expect and are anxious about their ability to succeed in such an unfamiliar format. The list of computer skills needed for our online courses is quite short. Students need to know how to:
- Browse the Internet
- Log in with a username and password
- Attach and retrieve files from an e-mail message
Operating Systems
As for the technical requirements, Blackboard interacts successfully with both Windows and Mac systems. Windows systems should be using Windows XP or higher, and Mac systems should be running OS 10 or higher.
Browsers
To ensure that Blackboard will interact well with your preferred browser, we strongly recommend that ALL new users run the 'Check Browser' utitlity. There is a link to activate this utility on our Welcome page, the log in page, and also on the myBlackboard page once users have logged in (look to the right hand side of the top section). The Check Browser utility checks to make sure that your browser and its settings are appropriate and indicates which aspects, if any, need to be addressed.
Internet Connection
The documentation for Blackboard CE indicates that it will work with a dial-up connection that has a minimum speed of 56 KB/sec. While this is technically possible, interacting with the various tools used within the courses becomes very slow. We recommend that users have at least a DSL-type connection (128 KB/sec and higher). If you do not know how fast your Internet connection is, you can go to SpeedTest.net or DSLReports and perform a quick test to determine both your upload and download connection speeds.
