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Copy Previously Developed Content into a New Course

Course Copy

Each semester, instructors are supplied with blank course shells for each of their courses. Already developed courses may be copied into a blank course shell and modified to fit the new semester. For this documentation, the following two sample courses are used:

course list indicating the courses in which you are enrolled and from which you can pick a course to copy from

Find Your Course IDs and Course Names

Two different attributes of a course are the Course ID and Course Name. In the Course List area, the information listed before the colon is the course ID, and the information listed after the colon is the course name.

Copy Previous Course Content into a Blank Shell

Note: Copying course content is initiated in the course that has the content - not the empty course. Start from the course you want to copy from, to avoid copying a blank course into the course that has your content.

1. First, open the course that has the content you wish to copy over (in this example, manny_sandbox: Manny Bb2 Sandbox).

course listing indicating a course copy will take place from "manny_sandbox" to "Dev 3350" as an example.

2. Next, find the Control Panel at bottom left, and click Packages and Utilities. 

3. The Packages and Utilities options will expand. Select Course Copy. 

Expanding the options located under Packages and Utilities provides access to Course Copy.

 

4. You will be taken to a Copy Course page. In the first step, select Copy Course Materials into an existing Course (this may be the only option available to you). Click Browse button to select the Destination Course ID.

Course copy page the option for "copy course material to an existing course" is on by default, click browse to look for a course

 

 

6. Blackboard will list all of the courses in which you are the instructor. You can use the search by: feature to find a specific course. Select the course you want to copy content into and click submit.

Screenshot of the search by feauture in blackboard

7. Next, place checkmarks beside the content that you wish to copy into the blank course.

  • If you select the Content Areas checkbox, all content folders will be automatically included.
  •  You can also copy tests, journals, blogs and any other tools you utilized in the previous course.
  • Tools like Announcements and Calendar may not need to be copied if the information there only pertains to a previous semester.
  • If the Discussion Board tool is brought over, all posts/replies by all users (including students) copy over as well and will need to be deleted.

 Shown below is an example of recommended settings when copying courses. These settings may vary depending upon your course copy needs.

Select all course materials, all settings will be checked

8.  Under File Attachments select Copy Links and Copies of the Content (it should be the default option).

Leave Copy Links and Copies of the Content selected as default.

9. At the bottom of the page click Submit.

Click Submit on the bottom right corner.

Blackboard Learn will send an email to your UHD address when the process is finished. It should take approximately 15 minutes for all materials to be copied to the other course. Once the copy is finished, you may see menu items in the new course that were not present in the original course. During the copy procedure, Blackboard Learn does not overwrite the existing content; rather the new content is added to the previously existing content. Menu items that were already in the blank shell will remain. Any empty unneeded menu items can be safely deleted.

For additional support, visit http://uhd.edu/bbhelpform