Prepare Your Course for Start of Term
Follow the detailed steps below to prepare your online course for students. Just want a short, printable list? Open this Online Course Checklist.
Before Term Begins
Course Content
- Use Course Copy to copy content from a previous term to your newest course shell. See the link at the top of this page.
- Set permissions for your files. See Set Student Permissions at the top of this page.
- Ensure this Saints email information link is in your syllabus
- Optional: Reach out to your students in the week prior to the start of the term
Dates
- Use date management to automatically update all availability and due dates. See the link at the top of this page.
- Review the dates within the date management list to ensure all module, quiz, discussion, assignment, and test availability dates and due dates are accurate
- Manually edit dates in the following areas:
- Update your Syllabus with the correct term, as well as any other new information
- Update any DATES in your Schedule. If you only use DAYS in your Schedule, confirm they are the correct days for the new term.
- Update lesson pages. If you include dates or days in your lessons, confirm they are accurate for the new term.
Grade Center
- Blackboard always creates a new Total column and marks that column as the External Grade. It is always necessary to visit your full grade center and set your intended grade total column (the one you set up for students to see their final grade) as External Grade, then DELETE the Total column that was auto-generated.
- Edit or clean up Grade Center as needed.
Discussion Forums
- Edit and update your welcome message on the introductions discussion board (and any other discussions where you have posts). Editing the post sets the current date and removes "from anonymous".
- Subscribe to the SOS forum (If needed, set SoS Forum so members can subscribe)
- Check that there are no student posts in your discussions. If you copied your course correctly, there shouldn't be. If you find that you did copy the student posts, delete all old forum posts.
- If you use group discussions, clear all old posts in these areas
Course Shell
- Hide course tools or course menu links you don't use. This should only need to be done once, and it should copy correctly to the new term. Click the action link next to a course menu item, then choose to delete or hide the menu item.
- Please keep in mind that you should keep certain course menu areas/items available for students, such as My Grades, My Messages, and the Student Support links.
Do a Walk-Through in Student Preview
- Read your syllabus and follow all links to ensure they're live and open in new tabs
- Complete any tasks required to release content such as marking reviewed or taking a syllabus quiz
- Make sure your first lesson releases as designed. (e.g., If the Syllabus Quiz opens Lesson 1, take the quiz and make sure the lesson opens as expected.)
- Check for obsolete or incorrect information
- If you have quizzes, activities or assignments, follow links to confirm they open and work
- Click on My Grades and note any incorrect assignments or duplicate total/weighted total columns
Manage Your Bb Instructor Experience (Optional)
- Remove and arrange courses on your course list
After Term Begins
In Blackboard
- Email students to confirm they're checking their Saints email
- Use "last access" column in the grade center to check for non-participating students.
- Drop no-shows and add wait-listed students (Hint: Use discretion when considering late adds.) Not sure how to add or drop? Read this post Adding and Dropping Students
- Submit your first-week attendance by Sunday midnight (10-week courses)
TIP:
Before re-adding desperate, dropped no-shows, take a moment and check student transcripts. A previous term of failed online courses might indicate a questionable situation.
Blackboard Course Copy
Please read this entire post before copying your course. While the process is easy, it is also important to avoid common mistakes.
When to Use Course Copy
The course copy process can be used to copy an entire existing course, including all tests, lessons, pages, documents, assignment drop boxes, etc., from one course to another. The most common case is copying a course you teach from one term to a newer term.
When NOT to Use Course Copy
There are also some cases in which course copy may not be your best action:
- If you have not built in Blackboard before, please use the instructions to import a course structure.
- If you want to move tests or pools from one course to another, please follow the Blackboard Tests and Pools Export/Import Instructions.
If you're unsure which process suits your needs, Online Learning 503 491 7170 can help.
Before you Begin
The course copy process must be completed before any other content is added to the course and before any edits are made to the course.
- After submitting your course copy (see below), DO NOT make ANY edits to your course until you receive a confirmation email that the course copy process has completed.
- If your copy does not look as intended, DO NOT COPY AGAIN. Contact Online Learning for help.
- Do NOT copy a course more than once into the same target shell or copy multiple courses into the same shell. This will result in duplicate content, duplicate grade center columns, etc. Contact Online Learning for assistance if you need to copy elements from different shells.
To copy course content...
- Enter the source course. This should be the course shell with existing content you want to copy.
- From Course Management Menu in source course, select Packages and Utilities
- Choose Course Copy
- Copy Type is fixed by default to the correct copy option.
- Browse Destination Course
- You may see a long list of courses. TIP: Use search tools to narrow options
- Select Destination course and hit Submit
- "Select ALL" Course Materials.
- Highly Recommended: Do not change any settings except the options listed below. If you want to change a setting please contact Online Learning first.
- Discussion Board: Select "Include only the forums with no starter posts" (the second option) to make sure you do not copy old student and instructor posts into the new course.
- Announcements: If you do not re-use announcements from term to term, deselect Announcements.
If you accidentally copy your discussion threads, check out How to Delete Old Discussion Threads in New Class
- Keep "Copy Links and copies of the Content (include entire course home folder)"
- Submit
- You will be sent an email confirming that the course copy is complete. Most courses will finish copying within 20 minutes. During times of high volume, it may take longer. Be patient.
- ABSOLUTELY DO NOT CLICK SUBMIT MORE THAN ONCE.
- WAIT FOR THE CONFIRMATION EMAIL BEFORE PROCEEDING WITH ANY OTHER EDITING IN YOUR COURSE.
Problems?
Copied your course and still no content appears in the new course?
Check to make sure you did not reverse the Source course and Destination course. It happens. You can confirm this happened by visiting the Source course and reading the message along the top of the window -- it will tell you which course was copied to which destination. Luckily, copying in the reverse direction shouldn't harm your course contents. Just try again, making sure you enter the course with your content and copy it to the new or empty course.
Course Copy FAQ
The ability for instructors to copy their own courses has been around for several years now. Click the button below to open an archived FAQ about the process.
Blackboard Course Copy Process
Instructors can copy their courses in a few easy clicks.
When new course shells are created prior to an upcoming term, the new shells are empty and do not contain any content or structure. Once the term shell is available and you are ready, follow the Bb course copy process detailed on the main page (close this FAQ to return to the main page).
FAQs
- What if I am working in my NEW_ shell now? You can copy content from the DEV to the term shell using the same process.
- What if I have multiple sections of a course? Prepare one section and then copy to the others when done.
- What if I have merged sections? OL staff will still need to merge sections for instructors. Copy content into section W1 or H1 and edit only that section. Do not worry about copying content into the other sections.
- Is the empty shell the new accessible shell? The course shell is completely empty and your course will copy over as is.
- Can I have a copy of the accessible template instead? Of course! Contact Online Learning to get started.
- What if I copy the wrong course? Contact OL and we will clear it for you.
- What if I want to work on a course that is not scheduled yet? OL staff will work with you to open a course shell.
- When do new term shells appear? New term shells will be available shortly before registration for teh upcoming term beings. You can check to see when a term schedule will be available using the registration calendar.
- What if I don't want to see the next term shell yet? Simply hide it and you can reveal it on your menu when you are ready.
Set Student Permissions
Please remember to perform this crucial process for every Blackboard course, every term. If you have more than one section, you'll need to set permissions for each one.
Set Student Permissions in Bb
The links in the steps below open images that illustrate the steps.
- Scroll to the Course Management menu in your course. Click Files to expand its options. Then click on your course ID.
- At the top of the page, click the action link beside the Course ID Title. Choose Permissions in drop-down.
- Look for "Student" in list of roles.
- If Student is already present, confirm that only the Read column is checked. If so, you are done.
- If Student is not listed, proceed...
- Along the top of the page, click Select Roles, then Institution Roles
- Click "01 Student" in the left box, then click to right arrow to move 01 Student to the right box. Confirm ONLY Read is checked.
- You do not need to worry about the Overwrite option lower on the page if students were not in the permission list (see Step 3 above).
- Click Submit at bottom right.
Video Instructions
Date Management in Blackboard
Whenever you copy your course into a new term, be sure to update the availability and due dates for assignments, discussions and tests. Here's how you can update ALL of your dates in ONE go!
Run Date Management
- Click on Control Panel/Course Tools/Date Management
- Choose "List all Dates for Review" Start--> Process Runs --> Next
- Click "Select Item Types" and choose tools you want to update. TIP:Don't select Announcements as these sometimes range beyond a ten-week period.
- Select Date Types. Check the bottom right area of the page to see if all of your dates are listed. If not, click Show All before you continue. Best practice: Choose them all and note number Adaptively Released. If there are many, be prepared to document which items have date adaptive releases.
- EASY METHOD: Adjust Dates the fast way by number of days e.g. 105 days....
Tip:
Find the first day of the term in the original course. Let's say it was April 6. Then find the first day of the term in the new course (the one whose dates you are editing). Let's say September 7. Then go to Google and type in "How many days between April 6 and September 7?" With any luck, Google provides a numerical answer.
Enter that as the number of days to adjust by. And if you end up off by a day one direction or the other? Just adjust dates again. This time add one day or subtract one day. Yes, you can subtract. Just use the up or down arrows next to where you enter the number.
- HARD Way: Adjust Dates the slow way by manually entering in the calendar
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