Preparing Your Course Shell on Blackboard Learn 9.1 A Guide for Instructors of Online and Web-Enhanced Courses How to Get a Blackboard Shell: Online Courses: When an online course is scheduled in ISIS, a Blackboard Learn 9.1 shell is created and enrolls the assigned instructor automatically. There is no instructor action required to get a shell for an online course. Web-Enhanced Courses: The instructor must fill out a course request form available at the SDCCD Online Learning Pathways Faculty Resources Page: http://www.sdccdonline.net/faculty/ About your new Blackboard Learn 9.1 shells: Online courses (fully, partially, hybrid) are designated with a computer icon in the schedule. Web-Enhanced courses are traditional on-campus courses that are supplemented with a Blackboard site and have no icon designation in the schedule. They are listed under My Courses after logging into Blackboard Learn 9.1. The new shell is a copy of a template which includes helpful links for students. The shell does not contain content cloned from a previous course. To add content: o Instructors can start fresh and add content with the Build Content button in the shell, or o Instructors can copy content from another shell on Blackboard Learn 9.1. Once instructors have received their Blackboard shell, they can prepare it for the upcoming semester. This preparation process may include one or all of the following steps. Each of these steps is covered in more detail in this guide. 1. Bulk Delete (optional) Entire content areas and/or tool areas can be deleted. Prevents duplication of content that will be copied from another shell. 2. Course Copy (optional) Instructors can copy materials from another one of their Blackboard Learn 9.1 shells 3. Course Cleanup & Preparation Build Content Create Assessments Setup the Course Menu Prepare Tool Areas
Bulk Delete Performing a Bulk Delete operation is optional. Please read this section to determine whether your situation would benefit from Bulk Delete. If not, you can skip this section, and go directly to the Course Copy or the Cleanup Steps sections of this guide. Don t remove the student orientation and tutorial links from your new Blackboard Learn 9.1 shell. Those will help your students! A Bulk Delete allows instructors to delete large quantities of content from their course shell. When preparing for an upcoming course, the Bulk Delete feature is most useful if: 1. Instructor will be copying their content from a different course on the system, and 2. The content in the template already exists in that course that will be copied. If the instructor plans to start fresh in the new shell to develop their course (and not copy their content from a previous course), then using Bulk Delete in the new shell is not recommended. The student tutorials and orientation links that come with the template should remain in the shell. The Bulk Delete process does allow selection of specific content areas and tools, so if parts of the course shell need to remain untouched, they can be excluded from the Bulk Delete process. To perform a Bulk Delete: 1. First double-check that you are in the correct shell. 2. Go to Control Panel Packages and Utilities Bulk Delete. 3. Check the boxes next to the materials to be deleted. Areas left unchecked are excluded from the deletion process. 4. Keep Users unchecked. This prevents student data from being deleted from the shell. 5. Type the word Delete (capitalized with no quotes) in the confirmation field. 6. Hit the Submit button once, and wait for the green success message: Success: Bulk Delete operation completed. A gray square icon next to a link on the menu indicates that the content area is empty. The empty content areas can be deleted by clicking the ActionLink (chevron) button for that link and selecting Delete. Be careful! If you delete a content area that has items in it, then all of the items inside that content area will also be deleted.
Course Copy Instructors have the option of copying material from another course shell into the new shell. To perform a Course Copy: You ll need access the Control Panel in the course that contains the content you need to copy. In the Control Panel, select Packages and Utilities, and then select Course Copy. Think of the course copy process as a push process. You push content from an old shell into the new one. 1. Select Copy Type; choose Copy Course Materials into an Existing Course. 2. Click the browse button, and select the Destination Course ID that s the shell into which you are copying this content. In this case it s the live shell with your CRN. Find that shell on the Courses page and click the radio button next to it. Then click the Submit button on the Courses page. 3. Check the boxes next to the items that you wish to copy. You don t have to copy everything. You may consider excluding Adaptive Release Rules for Content. Those rules are probably specific to students from the previous semester, and they probably don t need to be copied. You will also be able to delete anything that gets copied over into the new shell that you end up not wanting. 4. Under Course Files, keep the button selected for Copy links and copies of the content. 5. Under Enrollments, keep Include Enrollments box unchecked. 6. Click the Submit button. A green success message displays at the top of the screen. Success: Course copy action queued. An email will be sent when the process is complete. Please note: The course copy process may take up to 30 minutes to complete. Do not be alarmed if the content does not appear in the target course after receiving the confirmation email. Please wait 30 minutes after submitting to check for the content in the target shell.
Cleanup Steps to Prepare Your Shell Once you have copied your content into your course for the new semester, you ll be ready to begin preparing that content in the new shell. 1. Build Content: Use the Build Content button to add content to your course. The most common content items are covered below: Item: Add text and images onto the current page File: Add a link to a file (.doc,.pdf, etc.) URL: Add a link to an address on the Internet Content Folder: Add a link to a subfolder Blank Page: Add a link to a page that build on the system 2. Create Assessment: Use the Create Assessment button to add links on the current page to assessments. The most common assessments are covered below: Tests: Blackboard Tests (not just a file of instructions) to be taken online through Blackboard. Assignments: Blackboard Assignments (not just a file of instructions) to be submitted online through Blackboard. Turnitin Assignments: Assignments that get submitted to Turnitin for plagiarism detection purposes. To maximize consistency across courses, there is no option available to customize the icons in the course. Also, all links are displayed in a vertical list on the page.
3. To change the file that an icon is linked to, (for example, to swap out an old syllabus file with a new one) select Edit in the ActionLink menu for that item. Then click the Select a Different File button, and browse for the new file. 4. Reorder items on the menu: Click the vertical arrow button next to that item, and drag and drop the item to the desired location on the menu. 5. To rename, hide, or delete items on the menu use the ActionLink button for the menu items. Be careful when you delete links to content areas. All of the items inside of the content area will also be deleted.
6. Reorder content items on a content page by clicking the vertical arrow button next to that item, and dragging and dropping the item to the desired location on the page. 7. To hide an item on the page, select Edit from the ActionLink menu, and then select No next to Permit Users to View this Content. 8. Move an item to another location in the course by selecting Move from the ActionLink menu. Then click the Browse button to select a desired location.
9. Prepare discussion forums: Remove previous student threads: Open the forum, select all the threads in that forum, and then click Delete. Turn off Force Moderation: Unless the instructor wants to approve each student thread before it gets posted to the forum, instructors should turn off Force Moderation. Edit the forum, and then keep Force Moderation of Posts unchecked. 10. To hide columns from students in the Grade Center, click the ActionLink button for the column (Control Panel Grade Center Full Grade Center), and select Show/Hide to Users. Some columns cannot be hidden from users. If the column is set as the external grade (has a green checkmark), then the Show/Hide to Users is not listed. So, first set another column to be the external grade, and then you will have the option to Show/Hide to Users for the first column.