Extracting Course Materials from Blackboard (For Instructors) Section 1: Begin the archiving process Section 2: Retrieve the course archive Section 3: Preparing to access the archive file Section 4: Accessing the archive file Section 1 of 4: Begin the archiving process 1 Login to Blackboard and then navigate to the course you want to extract the materials from 2 Locate the Control Panel, on the lower left- hand side of the screen and find the group labeled Packages and Utilities 3 Click Packages and Utilities
4 Click Archive/Export Course 5 Click Archive
6 Click Submit 7 Blackboard will respond with a green success notification ***NOTE*** The time required for Blackboard to archive your course will vary and depends on the amount and type of material, system load and other factors. Blackboard will send you an email when the process is complete 8 Logout of Blackboard Section 2 of 4: Retrieve the course archive
1 After you receive email confirmation from Blackboard that the archiving process has been completed, you can retrieve the archive. Log in to Blackboard 2 Locate the Control Panel, on the lower left- hand side of the screen and find the group labeled Package s and Utilities. If the group is still not opened from your last visit to Blackboard, click Packages and Utilities 3 Click Archive/Export Course
4 If the archive process has been completed properly, a file will be listed on the page labeled Export/Archive Course 5 Right- click on the file name and the click on Save Target As (in IE)or Save Link As (in Firefox). Save the file on your hard drive in a location you find convenient. 6 Logout of Blackboard Section 3: Preparing to access the archive file 1 To access the archive you've just created, you'll use a free program named bfree created by the University of North Carolina. bfree is a Java based program so before downloading it, you'll need to insure you have Java installed and if it's installed, that it is up to date. Open a web browser and browse to http://www.java.com/en/download/installed.jsp, click on the red Verify Java Version button. 2 The page will scan you machine and either report that your Java is up to date or that you need to upgrade. If you experience a problem when attempting to upgrade to the latest version of Java, contact the W. P. Carey Technical Assistance Center (TAC) at (480) 965-2400 or via email at wpcarey.support@asu.edu. Section 4 of 4: Accessing the archive file
1 Once your Java version has been verified, browse to http://its2.unc. edu/tl/tli/bfree /about.html and click on the orange button labeled Launch about two- thirds of the way down the page. ***NOTE*** The LAUNCH button may not show, but it is there under DOWNLOAD
2 When you click on Launch, you may be presented with the option to save, run or open the program. Select the option necessary to run or open the program. If you're not sure which options to choose contact the W. P. Carey Technical Assistance Center (TAC) at (480) 965-2400 or via email at wpcarey.sup port@asu.edu. The bfree tool will start, and you should see and you should see a "Ready" message in the main window
3 To access your course archive, click on File > Open an archive or "zip" * in bfree. 4 Browse to the location where you stored your course archive file, locate the archive file, select it and then click Open
5 You'll see a yellow "Processing" message in the bfree banner and after a few moments, you should see a list of items in the main window that reflects your Blackboard Course Menu 6 To extract you course materials using bfree, uncheck the box on the first line of the content listing in the Extract colu mn. All the checkmarks in the Extract column will disappear. In this example, the materials I want to upload into Google Docs are in the Course Materials folder so I'll extract those items. Locate the
items you want to extract, and check the checkbox(s) in the extract column 7 On the bfree menu, click on File > Extract as files/folders*
8 Create a place to store the files, in this example I've created a folder called My Bb Courses on my desktop and have nested a folder named WPC 101 within it for storing my files. 9 Click Save. bfree will flash a yellow "Processing" message on the program's banner and will move your files to the location you designated. Using Windows Explorer or the Mac Finder, you'll find that within the folder you designated, bfree creates a folder that reflects the name of the menu item in Blackboard, in this example,
Course Materials. Within that folder, bfree will create a folder named TOP - -, and within that folder, there will be folders that contains each content item in your course