Shutdown course
To remove a course from students' My Blackboard pages and from the Blackboard course catalog:
Make the course site "Unavailable" by following the instructions in the Course Availability section of the Blackboard Instructor Manual.
Note: An "Unavailable" course will not be removed from instructors' or teaching assistants' My Blackboard pages, but it will be marked as "Unavailable."
To Archive a Course with Online Interactions (such as discussion board postings, grades, etc):
The archive process in Blackboard will create a .zip file that contains all the documents uploaded to the course site, as well as all course interactions in a format that are for the most part not "readable" by the human eye. To use the individual files in the archive (e.g., pdfs, PPTs, docs) you can unzip the .zip file and locate the file in question. To use the entire archive as an intact Bb course, you need to contact the Bb administrators to restore the archive .zip file to the Bb server for you.
1. Go to Control Panel > Archive Course.
2. Click on the "Submit" button.
3. Click on the link that says "Click here to download the generated package file."
4. Click on the "OK" button.
To Archive Without Course Interactions:
A Blackboard course "archive" that contains just the content items and not the student interactions (e.g., grades, submitted assignments, discussion board postings, etc.) is called a course export. Similar to archiving, exporting creates a .zip file that can be imported back into Blackboard only by the Bb administrators.
1. Go to Control Panel > Export Course.
2. Check the checkboxes next to the content you wish to save.
3. Click on the "Submit" button.
4. Click on the link that says "Click here to download the generated package file."
5. Click on the "OK" button.
Copying course content into an empty course shell
Faculty who have created a Blackboard course site in a previous semester may wish to re-use the content of that course site in the current semester's course. Rather than re-entering all that content anew, faculty can copy content from an old site into the new shell created for them each semester. In the past (Bb 5), Bb administrators needed to perform this copy operation, but in Bb 6 faculty can do it themselves.
Directions to copy a course:
- Determine that the correct empty course shell exists for the current semester. Note the Bb course ID of that course (IDs generally take the form CIT200.01-F2004). If you don't see the site you into which you want to copy content, request the site first.
- Enter the Control Panel of the (old) course, the contents of which you wish to copy INTO the (new) empty course site.
- Click Course Copy at the lower left area of the Control Panel.
- Click Copy Course Materials into an Existing Course
- In the box beside "Destination Course ID" enter the Blackboard ID of the empty course site into which you plan to copy content. If you are not sure of the ID, use the Browse button to search for and select the appropriate course.
- Select the Course Materials you wish to copy (for example, Content, Announcements, etc.)
- DO NOT copy enrollments, as the enrollments for your new course will be automatically entered, and will be those students who have officially registered for the course.
- Click Submit
- Your copy request will be queued and you will be emailed when it is complete, at the email address listed for your Blackboard account.
- When you receive your email, you can enter your previously empty course site and find the content copied from your older course.
- Note that you may need to re-organize course menus due to naming differences between our Bb 6 course templates and the course settings in your older course site. If you have trouble doing this, start by making the first menu item number 1, and work through all menu items, either deleting them if not needed, or ordering them as required. Continue to the last menu item.
For more information about copying courses into existing course sites, read Bb, Inc.'s online instructor's manual.