Copying Content from One Blackboard Course To Another: Entire Sections of a Course

There are many reasons why you might want to copy all of much of a course from one Blackboard course you are teaching (or have taught) to another Blackboard course for which you are the instructor. For example, if you are re-teaching a course from a previous semester, and much of the content is still relevant to your new course, it would be very simple to copy that content over to the new course and then modify any content that needs changing. Similarly, if you are teaching two sections of a course, but you want to create them as separate Blackboard courses, you could add the course materials to one of the sections, and then copy most of the contents over to the other section. Please note that it's better to begin copying materials into your new course as one of your first steps of building that course. In other words, if you want to copy content from an old course into a recently created blank course shell, it's best that the area of the newer course have no content to begin with.

To copy parts of one Blackboard course to another course that you are teaching:

1. You can access your Blackboard course by logging in to myBucknell (opens in new window) and by clicking on the relevant course listing in the My Blackboard "gadget" on that page or by logging in directly to Blackboard (opens in new window).

2. If you want to copy materials from a course taught in a previous semester, then you'll need to find the full list of courses in the Course List module on the main My Blackboard page. You may have to scroll down on the page to see that module:

   

3. In that Course List module will be a list of all the courses currently on the Blackboard server associated with your account. Among the list of Courses you are teaching, click on the link for the course whose materials you want to copy to another Blackboard course. Blackboard calls this the "Source Course."

4. Make sure that the Edit Mode switch at the top-right corner of the page is in the On position. If the Edit Mode says "Off,", click on the switch to turn editing mode on:

   

5. Within the "source" course, click on the Packages and Utilities section to expand the list of itmems in that section:

   

6. In that expanded Packages and Utilities section of the Control Panel, click on the Course Copy link:

   

7. On the Copy Course page that Blackboard takes you to, click on the down arrow in the Select Copy Type area, and click on Copy Course Materials into an Existing Course:

   

8. Blackboard will reload the page. In the Select Copy Options section, you'll need to specify the "Destination Course ID": in other words, the course to which you want to copy the contents. Click on the Browse button to open up a Search window with a list of the courses for which you have instructor status:

   

9. By default, Blackboard will limit your search to courses for which you are the instructor, and it will list those courses on the search page. Since you'll be copying course materials into a course for the current (or upcoming) semester, the easiest way to limit the search is to search by Course ID and to include the semester in the search box. In other words, click on the radio button for Course ID, type the abbreviation for the current (or upcoming) semester, and click on the Search button:

   

10. Blackboard will respond with a list of courses that fit the search criteria. From that list, click on the radio button next to the course into which you want to copy the course materials, then scroll over (and down, if necessary) to click on the Submit button:

    

11. Blackboard will add the Course ID that you just selected to the Destination Course ID field on the Copy Course page. In Section 2 on that page (Select Course Materials), select the area(s) of the source course that you want to copy into your destination course. In the example below, we are assuming a typical (but minimal) example: you want to copy only the materials in the Course Documents section of the course.

    If you want to copy over tests or quizzes from the source course ("Tests, Surveys, and Pools"), or if the content area you are copying contains any tests or surveys that also need to be copied, you'll need to click on that "Tests, Surveys, and Pools" selection box, and we strongly recommend that you select Grade Center Columns and Settings as well. (Both are marked with the arrows in the figure below.) If you don't copy the Grade Center information, you'll end up needing to add the appropriate test(s) back into the content area where they'll be posted, in order for the Grade Center column to be created. The same is true for assignments. If you are copying the Assignments area of your course (or if you are copying a content area that has assignments in it, in other words, assignments to be submitted by students within Blackboard), you'll want to make sure to select the Grade Center Columns and Settings area as well, so that the assignments are listed in the Grade Center.

    If you click on the Settings link, your destination course will end up with the same "look and feel" as the source course (same button style, colors, etc.). Also, if you have entered any information about yourself into the Faculty/Staff Info area (now called "Contacts"), you may want to copy that section over, too:

    

12. In Section 3 - Enrollments - make sure that you do NOT select enrollments, because you don't want students from a previous semester's course to be copied into your current course. Instead, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on the button to send your changes to the server.

13. Blackboard will confirm in the green status bar at the top of the page that the course copy action has been "queued. An email will be sent when the process is complete." The copying could take several minutes, depending on how much material you are trying to copy. When the server finishes copying the content from the source to the destination course, you'll see an e-mail message sent from "Bucknell ITEC" with the subject header, "Course Copy process complete".

14. After you receive that confirmation email message, you can click on the My Blackboard tab at the top-left corner of the page to return to the opening Blackboard page, which should allow you to access your new course (with its newly copied content) from the Course List module:

    

Last revised August 20, 2010.   Please send questions or comments to itec@bucknell.edu.