Baruch Computing and Technology Center (BCTC)

How To's for Blackboard

The following instructions for important Blackboard features are found on this page:

Working with the Assignment Feature in Blackboard 8

Important Note: The assignment feature replaces Digital Drop Box.
View instructions for setting up an assignment and viewing students' submitted assignments

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Copying Course Content

To copy the content of one course into another, you can also use the alternative method of "Course Copy"

1. Go to control panel of the “source” course

2. Click Course Copy (at the bottom in the "Course Options" box)

3. Copy Course Materials into an Existing Course

4. Browse for the “Destination Course ID” and click “Select” to the rigth

5. Select the check boxes next to all the content that you will need (e.g., Syllabus, Course Documents, etc.)

Note: do not click “Enrollments”

6. Click "Submit"

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Making a Blackboard Course Available to Students

(Note: courses must be manually made available to students at the beginning of the term)

  1. In your Blackboard Course, go to Control Panel on the left
  2. In the lower-left, Click on Settings
  3. Click on Course Availability (Note: Course Availability means Course Visibility to Students)
  4. Click on Yes
  5. Click Submit

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Saving a Backup of your Course Content

(Note: Highly Recommended)

We highly recommend that faculty make a backup copy of their course content regularly and save this to their computer. The process below can be used to backup the content of your course (files, assignment instructions, etc.) although not the particular student data.

From your course

  1. Click Control Panel
  2. Click Export Course
  3. Tick the checkboxes for the content you would like to export
  4. Click Submit

The following message will appear shortly thereafter:
This action has been successfully queued. An email will be sent when the process is complete.

  1. Click OK

You may see the link to the zip file (which contains the content of the course) right away.

Example:

ExportFile_BB_Blackboard_8_Example_Course_20090401110559.zip

However, depending on the size of the files in the course, you may have to wait a few minutes and come back to this page to see this link (Control Panel>Export Course)

  1. Click the link and choose the option to Save to Disk (or similar wording)

This .zip file is a copy of your course content and if necessary can be restored using the import feature of Blackboard.

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Merging Student Enrollments

This feature is useful if you are teaching many sections, but you want to post materials, announcements, etc. to your students in Blackboard only once. This process involves merging the student enrollments of two or more Blackboard courses into one of the Blackboard courses. Students from all sections would then have access to this one section.

Setting up a Merged Course Section

    1. From the Blackboard Home Tab, locate the Course Merge Tool, toward the bottom of the Blackboard Home page
    2. Click the link: Click Here to Create and Manage Merged Courses
    3. Click Set Up New Merged Course
    4. Select the courses to be merged (Source courses)
      Example: if you happen to be teaching sections A, B, C & D, then choose only: B, C & D
    5. Click Make an Existing Course a Merged Course
    6. Select the Merged course (Target course)
      Example: in the scenario above, you would select section A
    7. Click Submit

The instructions should walk you through the process.  The end result in the example above would be that section A has all student enrollments for all four sections.  So, if you were to post an announcement in A, all your students would see it.

In order to avoid confusion among your students, you may want to change the name of the merged course section to indicate that it is available to students from all sections (for example, you may want to simply remove the section number from the title of the section). You may also want to hide the course sections that you will not be using.

Changing a name of the Merged Course Section

  1. Click Control Panel
  2. Click Settings (in lower left in Course Options area)
  3. Click the link Course Name and Description
  4. Change the Course Name
  5. Click the Submit button

Hiding a Course Section

  1. In your Blackboard Course, go to Control Panel on the left
  2. In the lower-left, Click on Settings
  3. Click on Course Availability (Note: Course Availability means Course Visibility to Students)
  4. Click on No
  5. Click Submit

Note: The merge tool is a custom-designed feature for CUNY, so there will not be information on this feature in the Blackboard manual.

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Updating E-mail Addresses in Blackboard

This method of updating their e-mail address will work for faculty, staff, and students:

From the Blackboard Home Tab:

  1. Click "Update E-mail" (on the left under Tools)
  2. Change the e-mail address to a valid CUNY address.

Downloading and Uploading a Grade Center file to Enter Grades

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Downloading and Uploading a Grade Center file to Enter Grades

The following process is useful if you prefer to work in Microsoft Excel to enter grades for your students. However, be aware that there are many steps involved in the download and upload process.

Downloading Grade Center File

  1. In Blackboard 8, Grade Center, choose Manage>Download and choose comma-separated format and click Submit to export.
  2. Then, instead of double-clicking on the exported file directly, first open Excel, then Open the file from within Excel. (choose All Files to see the .csv file)
  3. A series of screens should walk you through the process (in these screens, again, choose comma instead of tab as the delimiter).
  4. Select "Username" column
  5. Select "Text" instead of "General"

Important Note: Username: column: (it is very important that this column is clicked): this must be done through the wizard screen steps, in order to work.

Now you can enter or copy your grades into this .csv file Note: the rows in this file must be perfectly matched to the rows of students grades that you are copying.

  1. Save the file.

Uploading Grade Center File

  1. After this, go back to Grade Center and choose Mangage>Upload to upload this file to Blackboard
  2. Browse for the .csv file on your computer
  3. Click Submit

Note: make sure auto is selected under delimiter type (strangely, it doesnt seem to work if comma is selected).

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