Last update: July 2022

At the end of each academic year, all course units in Blackboard will remain open, meaning that any information contained within the course will be accessible to the enrolled students until the end of their university career.

While students will appreciate this, it does pose several risks that teaching staff need to be prepared for, specifically:

  • Any open assessments will remain open, potentially allowing students across year groups to share questions/answers.
  • Any feedback provided to tests will remain open, potentially allowing students to download and share the correct answers for tests and share across year groups.
  • Any “at risk” content, such as confidential research data, will remain available to the students.
  • There will be open, unmonitored discussion boards.

This guide is designed to help you proactively close down any of these risk areas.

What can you do to decrease the risk?

It is expected that the person co-ordinating the unit makes decisions and takes appropriate action to ensure that students are not advantaged or disadvantaged by the courses remaining open. Several options to consider are:

  • Make sure your Blackboard tests are new each year to avoid cheating.
  • Add question banks into your Blackboard tests, so that every student gets different questions and there is no easy way to pass the information to other students. Randomise the questions and also (in the case of MCQs or MAQs) randomise the answers.
  • Switch off all your previous year’s course assessments and close all access to feedback and grades.
  • Close down all discussion boards in the previous year’s course.
  • Close down all files providing feedback to your students in the previous year’s course.
  • Use adaptive release options in the new course so that tests, unwanted files and discussion boards close down automatically..

When you have decided what you want to do, please see the below for help:

Ensure that your Blackboard tests are new each year to avoid cheating.

The eLearning Team can provide training on how to make assessments and workshops to enable you to set up your Blackboard course with a member of the team on hand.

Add question banks into your Blackboard tests, so that every student gets different questions and there is no easy way to pass the information to other students.

The eLearning Team provide training on how to make assessments and workshops to enable you to set up your Blackboard course with a member of the team on hand.

Switch off all your previous year's course assessment and close all access to feedback and grades

Step 1: How to hide Blackboard Assessments/Tests

  • Access the course in Blackboard (paying attention to the year that the course was delivered to be sure you are seeing the correct course)
  • Make sure the “Edit Mode” is set to “on”
  • Locate the Assessment/Test which you would like to hide and choose the drop-down menu next to it
  • Click “Edit the Test Options”
  • In the “Test Availability” section, change “Make the Link Available” to “no”
  • Submit
  • This test is now hidden to users (Please note: Feedback is still available to users).

Step 2: Hide access to the feedback by hiding parts of the Grade Centre

When assessments are hidden, students can still see feedback for the assessment in the grade centre and take copies of the answers. To hide the feedback:

  • Enter the course and navigate to the Grade Centre > Full Grade Centre
  • Scroll left and right until you find the column for the assessment you wish to hide. Hover over the column title until you see the button to the action menu and click to open the menu
  • Choose “show/hide to students” (note, not staff) and the column title should show an icon of a grey spot with a red strike. This is now hidden from students
  • Repeat with other columns you wish to hide.

Step 3: Hide any files that may contain assessment answers and feedback

  • Access the course in Blackboard (paying attention to the year that the course was delivered to be sure you are seeing the correct course)
  • Make sure the “Edit Mode” is set to “on”
  • Locate the content which you would like to hide and choose the drop-down menu next to it
  • Click “Edit”
  • In the “Standard Options” section, change “Permit Users to View this Content” to “no”
  • Submit
  • This item is now hidden from users.

Close down all discussion boards in previous year's course

To hide old discussion boards:

  • Go to the Blackboard course you want to close the discussions on
  • Go to “communication” in the left-hand menu, or to where your discussion boards are located
  • Locate the “forums”
  • When you hover over each forum a drop-down menu icon will appear. Click this and choose “edit”
  • Set the availability to “no”
  • Submit
  • Repeat with remaining forums.

Close down all files providing feedback to your students in previous year's course.

  • Access the course in Blackboard (paying attention to the year that the course was delivered to be sure you are seeing the correct course)
  • Make sure the “Edit Mode” is set to “on”
  • Locate the content which you would like to hide and choose the drop-down menu next to it
  • Click “Edit”
  • In the “Standard Options” section, change “Permit Users to View this Content” to “no”
  • Submit
  • This item is now hidden from users
  • Repeat with other items of content.

Use adaptive release options in the new course so that tests, unwanted files and discussion boards close down automatically.

You can set all content in Blackboard to automatically appear or disappear at specific times on specific days. To learn more, please see our Adaptive release page here.

Closing an old course and hiding “at risk” information