Staff Information

Granting Guest Access to a Module in Blackboard

When content is delivered online modules may have to be opened up for guest access to allow Educational Support Workers (e.g. Sign Language Interpreters, Note takers) to support disabled students. The Disability Service may request that you grant guest access to a module and that you send a guest link for distribution to Educational Support Workers.

The steps below allow users without an account to view content. You can do this for content such as PDFs, videos, PowerPoint etc. but not for student-created content such as discussion posts, assignments, journals etc. Then anyone with the link can access the content without needing to login. You could restrict access again once the guest has the content if needed so others cannot access content as a guest.

To make a folder available to guests:

Click on the folder you wish to make available from the left-hand menu and select ‘Permit Guests’

Go into the folder and copy the URL (it’s going to be something long like ‘https://tcd.blackboard.com/webapps/blackboard/content/listContentEditable.jsp?content_id=_xxxxx_1&course_id=_xxxx_1&mode=reset’

You need to provide this URL to the guests.

Guide for Guests/ How to test the link is working:

Guests can’t access the link directly. They will need to:

• Go to mymodule.tcd.ie and click on ‘Guests’ (top of the screen) then ‘Preview as Guest’ (at the very bottom of the page)
• You are now authenticated as a guest
• Copy & paste the links sent to you into the address bar of your web browser; you should now have access to the files.

As long as they do the ‘Preview as Guest’ first in the same web browser they should have access.

You can test it yourself by logging out of Blackboard and closing your browser, then try the steps above to access the guest link.