Reviewed: 02/01/2020

This page is written for Teaching Staff that have experience of the Blackboard system. For more detailed information please contact a member of eLearning with experience of this system.

Due to the MHS/FLS merger for the academic year 2016-17, all courses will be rolled over automatically by IT services. The remainder of this article helps you to start updating the course once the course copy procedure has completed.

Access

In order to Roll over a course from year to year, you MUST have primary instructor access to the previous years course and the new years course via Campus Solutions.

Activating your new course

Use the standard course activation, but when you get to the template drop down box, ensure you pick the option to copy from the previous version of the course rather than using the standard course structure. How to Activate Your Blackboard 9 Course.

Results of a copy

From testing we found the following edits should be made in the new course. Please go to all sections that apply to your new course

Left hand menu

This should look exactly the same as your previous course. Please ensure any sections that are not going to be in use are hidden from the users.

Course Content

All of your course content will have been transferred across and all permissions will remain the same as they were in the course you copied from at the time of copy, therefore if all lecture notes were available to students in last years course at the time of copy, then they will all be available to the students by default in your new course. It will probably be necessary for you to hide/set adaptive release/remove content.
If you want to remove a file from the course completely, it is a good idea to also delete it in the content collection to prevent confusion in the future.
If you want to do a direct replacement of one file with another without completely deleting and remaking the file link, e.g. Unit specification or timetable, you can do the following:

  1. Locate the file to be overwritten in the Content Collection (Content collection > link containing your course code (usually the top one))
  2. Click on the button to the right hand side of the file name
  3. Click Overwrite File
  4. On the new page click Browse and locate the file you are overwriting with from your computer, click open and it will attach into the box on the Blackboard page
  5. Click submit
  6. The file should now be overwritten. It may take several minutes for this to update in the actual content area.

Course files – this applies to EVERY course

These come across intact, however the files may not be available to students due to Content collection permissions. Enter the content collection and change the permissions for all folders and/or files that contain info that you wish to display.

  1. Click on Content collection
  2. Click on the first link (the one that contains the code for the unit
  3. You will see a folder with the same code as the link you just clicked on and it will contain the words imported content e.g. I3032 -BIOL-12345-1111-2SE-123456_ImportedContent_123456789012345
  4. To the right hand side of this folder name you will see an icon under the title Permissions, click this icon
  5. Click Select Specific Users By Place and a drop down menu will appear, click Course
  6. In “Choose Courses” click the check box for the new course you have created (check that you have ticked the box for the course with the correct year)
  7. In “Select Roles” click the check box for Student
  8. In “Set Permissions” click the check box for Read
  9. At the bottom of the page, Press submit

This should now ensure that all students can view any content within the course that you make available to them. If you have any problems with this, please contact the eLearning Team.

Discussions

Discussion boards do not copy across, however if there were links to them within your course last year, then these links will remain, but they will be broken if the student tries to click on them. It is therefore important that you remove these links and create new ones if required.

You will need to create new discussion boards.

Assessments

Assessments copy over, it is however extremely important that you check these are still working properly.

The deployed assessments remain deployed and keep the same adaptive release criteria and dates, these will all need to be updated to match the new dates and criteria needed for the new year.

Any “Revision” assessments may have been left open from the previous year, if these contain questions that the students will be marked on elsewhere, you MUST hide them before the students gain access to the course.

Adaptive release

Adaptive release comes across fine. Date criteria need rolling over manually one item at a time.

Wikis

Wiki spaces copy over, however they are emptied of all content and information.

Blogs

Blog spaces copy over, however they are emptied of all content and information.

Announcements

All announcements copy over, these may need deleting

Groups

Groups are created as are the tools within the groups. If you use group discussions, these behave the same as regular discussions on copy.

You will need to re-populate the groups with the new students once they are fully enrolled.

Grade Centre

The grade centre columns seem to copy fine, as do the settings. However you may find an extra “Total” and “Weighted Total” columns that may require deleting. The post dates for the assessments will need altering.

Quick Files

If you previously used quickfiles, then the URL will remain pointing to the old courses quickfiles area, therefore this will need updating to the new quickfiles area, please contact the eLearning Team if you need to alter this.

Contact us

This is the extent of the testing so far, if you are copying courses and you find something that should be added to this page, please let the eLearning know by emailing eLearning@manchester.ac.uk (please make it clear in your message that it is for the attention of FBMH).

 

 

BB9 Unit Roll Over – Teaching Staff