Course Management

Blackboard comes with a range of tools to manage your course, from setting them up before the start of a semester, to saving a copy at the end of the semester.

Every semester, you will need to request a fresh copy of your course(s). Approximately two months before the start of the next semester, departments will decide what courses will be offered. After you are assigned your courses, you will be able to request that they be added to Blackboard, using the Blackboard Faculty Tools.

After it is requested, courses can be built by adding content, and/or enabling collaboration or assessment tools. If you previously taught the same course using Blackboard, you may also want to consider the Course Copy feature, allowing you to reuse materials from the earlier course.

Once you feel your Blackboard course has been sufficiently prepared, you will want to open the course for your students.

At the end of the semester, the course will automatically close for your students. You will retain access to all of the materials and the Gradebook. You can choose to re-open the course so that students can access the materials or change the status to Complete, which allows access to materials but prevents student submissions or changes. If you have a student with an Incomplete, you can submit a ticket to the Division of IT to ask that access be extended for just that student so that they can continue working on the course requirements.

You may also consider saving a copy of the course materials using the Export feature. Courses are deleted from Blackboard after 5 years, so the course export allows you to retain your course materials after that date.