Studies show that encouragement from faculty, staff, and other students makes a significant difference in their student registration and turnout. HuskiesVote is a campus-wide initiative that strives to provide Northern Illinois University students with everything they need to know in order to participate in their elections. Now, you can easily import a module with resources from HuskiesVote to include in your Blackboard course!
The module includes information about the importance of voting, voter registration, polling locations, and researching the individuals and items on your specific ballot. Once you have imported the module, you have control over which items you share with your students.
We also encourage you to include a personal, non-partisan statement about why voting is important to you. You might record a brief video or write a short statement on the importance of voting from your perspective. A sample video is included in the module as an example to inspire your own appeal, and you can use sample language from the ALL IN Democracy Challenge for samples of non-partisan messaging you could adapt for this statement.
You can download the module as a .zip package at citl.niu.edu/huskies-vote-module (click the checkbox in front of the .zip file and then click Download in the toolbar). Once you have downloaded it, do not unpackage the file. Instead, follow these steps to import it into your course (or into a shell, if you want to view the contents before adding it to a course).
- Download the module from citl.niu.edu/huskies-vote-module.
- On the Course Content page, open the ellipsis (…) menu on the right side above the content list.
- Click Import Content in the menu.
- Click Import Course Content in the side panel.
- Find and select the .zip file to upload from your computer.
When import the module, it will initially be hidden from your students to give you the opportunity to review the content and add your personal statement on the Why I Vote Ultra Document (or delete the Document, if you do not wish to create a personal statement). When you are ready to do so, change the visibility on the Learning Module from Hidden from students to Visible to students so that students can access the materials.
There are many more great resources in the HuskiesVote faculty guide to bring voter registration, education and voter turnout information into your teaching.
