When to Use?
Do you have content in a Blackboard Classic course that you want to bring to your Blackboard Ultra course? This article will walk you through how to copy the content from one course to another. The article includes:
IMPORTANT NOTE: You will want to be in the destination course — the course where you want the copied content to go. This is the opposite of Blackboard Classic.
Copying Individual Content Items
When copying content from Blackboard Classic to Blackboard Ultra, we recommend copying item by item instead of doing a full course copy. While there are a lot of similarities between the two-course views, there are several key differences in the structure and organization, accessibility, and functionality. All of which affect the content that is being copied. It is best practice to copy content item by item or “cherry-pick” the items you want. This method allows you to copy and organize content more efficiently and allows you to rethink your course structure.
1. Navigate to the course where you want the copied content to go.
2. Go to your course's Content tab and do one of two options:
-
Click on the ellipsis (…), to the right of Course Content.
-
Click the plus icon (+) to access content options.
Select Copy Content from either content list. You will be redirected to the Copy Content panel.
3. In the Copy Content panel, all your courses & organizations appear under the Your Courses and Organizations list. You can use the search to find courses by name or course ID.
4. Once you have located the Blackboard Classic course you want to copy from, drill down into the course's content by clicking on the arrow to the right. The folders shown correlate with the top-level navigation menu items from the Blackboard Classic course.
5. Continue clicking on the arrow to drill down into the content to locate the items that you need.
6. Select the box next to each item that you would like to copy. Your selected items will appear in the panel to the right.
7. After you finalize your selections, select Start Copy and the copy action begins.
8. Status indicators on the Course Content page show the progress. A success message appears when the action completes. Once completed, the copied content will appear within the course
NOTE: The Copying wheel will spin for 30 seconds to a minute before it confirms your copy. But if you refresh your page, the content will already be copied into the course.
When it comes to copying content from Blackboard Classic to Blackboard Ultra, there are several items that we do not recommend copying:
- 3rd Party Content – Oftentimes, copying 3rd party content will create duplicates that are difficult to delete. This includes any content from publishers such as McGraw-Hill, Pearson, etc.
- LTI Integrations – The LTIs for Classic and Blackboard Ultra are different and will not copy over. LTI integrations can include Panopto, Padlet, etc.
- Discussion Boards – Discussions in Blackboard Ultra are set up differently than in Blackboard Classic. Copying Discussions from one to the other may not work as expected. It is best to create a new Discussion directly in Blackboard Ultra and copy & paste the text from the Discussion Board in Blackboard Classic.
- The Copying wheel will spin for 30 seconds to a minute before it confirms your copy. But if you refresh your page, the content will already be copied into the course.
- When copying items, have both your Classic and Ultra courses open side-by-side to compare as you go.
- You can copy from more than one course at a time.
When you copy content from Blackboard Classic to Blackboard Ultra, you may encounter some errors with the copied content. An error report will be available at the top of the Course Content page after each copy process with the number of errors or exceptions that occurred. Typically these errors can be ignored as they involve incompatible formatting and settings between Classic and Ultra.
