Copy a Blackboard Course or Specific Course Content

Follow these steps to copy a Blackboard course, or just certain course content, to a destination course. This is useful when teaching a new section of a past course, several sections of the same course, or if course content overlaps between multiple courses.

1. Log into Blackboard and navigate to your Courses page.

2. Find the destination course and, if necessary, make it unavailable/private. If the course is available, enrolled students will receive an email notification that content has been added to the course and, if any assignments from the source course had due dates, a notification that the assignments are all past due. To avoid confusion, make sure the destination course is unavailable.
   
   Unavailable courses are indicated by a lock below the course.
   
   
   
   
   

   If you don’t see the lock, you can select the More Options button to the right of the course and select Make Course Private, OR you can go into the course and select the Make Course Private.

   

3. Next, open the course which you want to copy materials into.
4. Navigate to the area of the course you want to add content to and select the Add Content  button.
   
5. Choose Copy Content from the menu

6. Check the box to the right of the course you want to copy content from to copy the entire course or 

7. Select the Content you want to copy. 

   1. If copying the entire course, click Select next to the course name to ensure that all of your content safely makes it to the Destination Course.

      Student-submitted work will never be copied over, with the exception of the Discussion board.

   2. If copying select content or files, choose the course name and select the individual folders or content items you want to copy.
8. Select the File Attachment settings:

   1. Copy links to Course Files: This is useful if you are copying from a shared template that may be updated mid-semester. If the files are overwritten in the original template, they will automatically update in all courses copied with this setting.

   2. Copy links and copies of the content: This is the default and recommended option for most course copy requests. This will ensure that the Destination Course receives its own copies of the selected content for your current students to access, rather than erroneously linking them back to the Source Course.

   3. Copy links and copies of the content (include entire course home folder)

9. Do not include enrollments in the Copy.
10. Click Submit to initiate the Copy. It will take a few minutes to run and you will receive an automated email once complete.

Export a Course

Exporting a Blackboard Course preserves all instructor-generated course content for use in a future course. Exports are necessary only when dealing with seldom-taught courses. At any given point, you only have access to the past two years of your Fairfield Blackboard courses. If you anticipate two years passing before you teach a course again, you may want to Export it for a potential future Import.

In most cases, you will be looking to copy the content of an old section of a course to a new one. As long as you still have access to the old course and the new one exists already, please use the Copy a Course or Course Content.

1. Log into Blackboard and navigate to your Courses page.
2. Open the course you wish to export.
3. On the content page, choose More options for course content
4. Select Export Course Package from the dropdown menu
   

5. Choose Add Export Package, then decide whether to include student data in the export

   ITS recommends against exporting student data with your course due to potential FERPA violations. Courses are archived automatically by ITS and if student data needs to be restored for an archived course, you may contact academiccomputing@fairfield.edu and submit a request with the original course ID or name.

   

6. You will receive an email when the exported course package is ready to download. You can also find the file by following steps 1-5 and selecting the archive from the Manual tab. Select the export file name and the file will automatically download to your device.
   

Import a Course

These steps show how to Import a Blackboard course that has previously been Exported to a local file directory. You should have a .zip file ready for Importing.

1. Log into Blackboard and navigate to your Courses page.
2. Open the course you wish to export.
3. On the content page, choose More options for course content
4. Select Import Content from the dropdown menu
   
5. Choose Import Course Content from the menu and select the .zip file from your computer
   

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