Bye bye Blackboard

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All Blackboard sites will be gone forever by 6/30/2012. Follow the steps below to ensure you have the content you need from Blackboard:

Get started with Sakai today by creating your Fall 2012 course site(s).

Where is my old Blackboard course content?

Your courses in Blackboard from Fall 2007 through Spring 2012 have been moved to Sakai. To find them –

Please review and compare to your old Blackboard course sites to be sure that you have most of your materials from previous courses. The content migrated should include course resources (PDFs, Word files, external web links etc), which are in the Sakai’s Resources section, and quizzes/tests which are in the Sakai’s Tests and Quizzes > Working Copies. See this related post to fix assessments (tests, quizzes and question pools) that didn’t import correctly.

Note: ALL Blackboard’s Organization sites (even prior to Fall 2007) have been moved to Sakai.

Not all content moves. You should know what content does move and what doesn’t.

How can I get content that doesn’t move?

Some data (e.g. grades, student-submitted assignments as well as Discussion Boards and Wikis/Blogs) in both Blackboard course and organization sites doesn’t move. If you wish, you need to manually save the data before June 30, 2012.

The documentation here provides the ways to save a copy of gradebooks/grades, download assignments that were submitted by your students from the Blackboard’s Assignment tool, copy/paste/print or export discussion boards, Wikis and Blogs.

How can I archive course offered prior to Fall 2007?

To save older course content,  you need to archive the course in Blackboard by going to the course site’s Control Panel > Archive Course, save the zip file on your computer; and then if you wish you can

  • follow the process to import content into a Sakai site. Or
  • use bFree to extract and view the archived file – see these instructions.

How can I reuse migrated content including tests in my new course?

The video (5 minutes) below provides basic overview of  working with migrated content:

What do other faculty do when switching from Blackboard to Sakai?

This example provides an insight into how to switch from Blackboard to Sakai using some Sakai tools to reorganize materials and engage students effectively.

At the 2012 CIT showcase, there was a faculty panel  session on Teaching with Sakai. In this recorded session, four faculty members who teach different disciplinary subjects discussed how they use Sakai to teach effectively. They also shared their experiences using some specific Sakai tools such as the Syllabus, Schedule, Media Gallery, Wiki, Blog, Dropbox and more.

What should my students take action to save their content and grades?

If your Blackboard course sites are still available, your students can:

  • Save instructional materials posted in Blackboard by you. They have to save them one at a time*. However, if you have all teaching materials in your computer, you can send them a zipped file, which could save time.
  • Save their own grades. They need to go to My Grades to copy and paste or print their own grades.
  • Save the assignments that they submitted previously via the Assignments tool. They need to go to My Grades to download them.
  • Save discussion boards. Here is the instructions for students (the same as for instructors) to copy/paste/print discussion threads easier.
  • Save posts in blogs and wikis. Students can print posts one at a time.
*Note: your students don’t have the Control Panel so that they cannot archive content as you, the instructor, do.

Do my teaching assistants in Bb have access to my migrated sites in Sakai?

No, only the person who has an Instructor role can access migrated sites. Neither  Teaching Assistants (TA) nor Students have access. You need to add the TA to the migrated Sakai site if you want. Please contact OIT Help to have your request processed since you cannot add users to a migrated site.

What happens to my Blackboard Organization site?

All organization sites from Blackboard have moved to Sakai as Project sites. Like in courses sites, discussion board, grades, wikis/blogs, and participants don’t move over. If you want to add participants,  you can batch add them using Toolkits.

Need help?