Adding Files to the Content Collection

Before you start making content available to your students, you will need to upload any files (such as Word documents, PDFs, PowerPoint files, image files, etc.) to your course’s Content Collection.

The Content Collection provides central file storage for your resources so that when creating content for student consumption, you simply link to items you have added to the Content Collection. When you change an item in the Content Collection, all links to the item reflect those changes.

In the Content Collection, you can create folders, upload files and then release those files to students (which we will go through later). This option helps you to efficiently manage your course materials and makes updating them much easier. When it comes to preparing for the next academic year, you can simply overwrite any file in the Content Collection, and it will automatically update in the course.

You access the Content Collection via the Course Management menu (Control Panel > Files).

Blackboard files - content collection
  • Course Content is used to store folders and files for the course you are currently in. This area is identified by the Course ID (e.g. I3115-HSTM-60511-1191-1SE-007197 in the example here)
  • All Courses Content lists a folder for each course you teach.
  • All Organisations Content lists a folder for each of your Community Spaces (unless you are a Participant).
  • Institution Content is used to store folders and files for educational and administrative services not directly related to a course.

Before you continue…

Access the Blackboard Support page that explains how to upload and organise your files:

This video outlines the method of uploading files to the Content Collection of your course:

Attaching Files from the Content Collection

Note that this video refers to files being stored in the Course Files area – we know this as the Content Collection.

If you feel confident with adding files to your Content Collection, move to the next page where we will look at adding and organising content in the student-facing area.