Launching a Nearpod Lesson Directly from Blackboard

We have recently launched the Nearpod LTI tool in Blackboard, which means you can now launch a live or student-paced lesson directly from Blackboard. There is no need to share the Nearpod site link or lesson code with your students. Everything is done from within Blackboard and your students’ full names are automatically populated in the lesson, so there is no need to ensure that your students add the correct name any more.

If you are not sure what Nearpod is, you register in the following courses through the PD Dashboard.

Introducing the HCT District Nearpod License

Creating Interactive Lessons in Nearpod

Follow the 5 steps below to set up the Nearpod LTI tool and launch a lesson.

Step 1

Go to the Blackboard course you wish to launch the lesson in and navigate to the content area you would like the students to access the link from. Ensure you have editing turned on.

Note: It is not possible to add the link in the main navigation area. It must be in one of the content areas.

Step 2

Go to Tools and choose Nearpod Lesson Launcher.

Step 3

Read the pop up notification and click Yes, I understand.

Step 4

Click on Log in with Office 365 and enter your HCT email address and password.

Note: you will only need to complete steps 3 and 4 one time to connect your account.

Step 5

In your Nearpod library, hover over the lesson you want to launch. Click on Live Lesson or Student Paced.

The link will be automatically created in that content area.

Students need to click on the link in Blackboard to join the lesson. Their full name will be automatically populated and they only need to click Join Session.

Important Information

Accessing the Lesson

When launching a lesson in Blackboard, both the instructor and students must access the lesson from within Blackboard. Instructors won’t see the live link in their regular Nearpod interface and there is no code generated for the instructor to share with their students. If you have students from other classes joining, then launch a regular lesson from within Nearpod and share the code from there.

Grade Center

At the moment, the lesson is not connected to the Blackboard Grade Center. All activity in the lesson needs to reviewed in the Nearpod reports feature, which you can mail to yourself  by clicking on the arrow next to Nearpod and choosing reports.

Or you can access it through the Reports tab in Nearpod.

Multiple Instructors in Blackboard

Whichever instructor launches the Nearpod lesson has the instructor view to the lesson. Any other instructor in the course will only be able to view the student interface. If they wish to conduct the lesson themselves, they will need to follow the above steps to launch a lesson link from their own Nearpod account.

Exiting Nearpod

There is no end session or log out option when launching a live Nearpod lesson. Simply click on the home button or the original content area to navigate back to the Blackboard course.

Note: the session will stay active as long as the link remains in Blackboard and you can restart the lesson at any time.

If you don’t want your students to have access to the link, you can either hide it from students or delete it. The lesson report will remain in Nearpod.

Student Paced Lessons

Complete the exact same steps to create a student paced lesson. The link title tells you which one is a live lesson and which is a student paced lesson.