Turn Off Pop-Up Blockers to use the Chat & Virtual Classroom

Pop-up blockers can cause the Virtual Classroom and Chat functions in Blackboard to fail. Pop-up blockers are built into Internet Explorer and the Google Toolbar, as well as other browser add-ons (Yahoo Toolbar, AOL Toolbar, etc).

In order to make the chat in Blackboard work, you need to disable pop-up blocking for the site blackboard.neu.edu. Here's how:

1. Go into your Blackboard course and select Communication / Collaboration / Chat / Join



2. Watch for the message bar at the top of the page in Internet Explorer and click it:



3. Click to allow popups from blackboard.neu.edu:



4. If you have it installed, the the Google toolbar will also have to be told to allow popups from blackboard.neu.edu. Click on this option:



5. If you have any other toolbar add-ons to your browser (such as the Yahoo Toolbar or the AOL Toolbar which get installed automatically during the installation of Yahoo Chat or AIM), you may need to tell them to stop blocking pop-ups on blackboard.neu.edu as well.

Once all pop-up blocking services have been turned off for the Blackboard site, the chat tool should work normally. Pop-ups will continue to be blocked on other sites.