Saturday, August 6, 2011

Getting Your Blackboard Learn Course Ready for the New Term

We have converted all courses to the Blackboard Learn (9.1) environment. There are a few procedural changes regarding how to copy course content from one course to another, and making the course available to the students at the start of the academic year.

First of all, copying content to a new course involves logging into Blackboard Learn at https://tritonbb.blackboard.com/, opening the old course which is the source of the content, and, by selecting "Packages and Utilities" and "Course Copy" in the Course Management Area. The key items that one must do is:
  • Select the new course into which the content is being copied
  • Select the Course Menu items that are being copied
  • Select the Tools (Blogs, Discussions, Journals, Tests, Rubrics, etc.) that are being copied
  • Submit the Copy Course form
Once the course is copied, it is necessary to open the new course and do the following:
  • Change dates that were set for any assignments, test, documents, discussions, learning modules, etc.
  • Clear out any old discussion postings
  • Confirm that the tests are deployed on the proper content pages in within Learning Modules, and, if they cannot be opened, redeploy tests
  • Confirm that all external links are opening properly
  • Change the Course Entry point to the page that you want the students to see first. The following link will take you to a demonstration on how to set the Course Entry point.
The following procedure explains how to copy existing course content to a new course shell.


In addition, if the course shell for the new term was created in Blackboard CE8 and was a blank shell when converted, the only item in the Course Menu will be "My Grades." If the new course shell was created in Blackboard Learn, you will see in the Course Menu the default links:
  • Home Page
  • Information
  • Content
  • Discussions
  • Groups
  • Tools
  • Help
Please delete any of the links that you will not be using.

Finally, it will be necessary to make the course available to the students on the first day of class. The following video from Blackboard explains how to do so: Setting Course Availability. A printable procedure that explains how to do this is available by clicking on Making the Course Available.