Faculty no longer need to request new Blackboard courses each semester. We have simplified this process so that Blackboard automatically creates a course shell for your courses every semester. All you need to do is add your content and make it available.
Faculty who want to copy a previous course into the new course shell can 1) manually copy a course from a previous semester or, 2) request the Blackboard Administrators to copy the course by submitting the course copy request form.
Note: When your new course content is ready, remember you need to make that course available to your students: Make Your Course Available.
Important: If you’re teaching a class that you have inherited from another instructor and wish to copy their blackboard course, you must first have the previous instructor email bbadmin@uark.edu and request that you be added to the previous course as an instructor. Otherwise you won’t be able to copy the course content.
Special Case
Any “special case” courses should use the course copy form.
- Your course needs to be merged: i.e. multiple sections or lab sections that need to be merged.
- Your course has multiple course numbers: i.e. listed for both undergraduates and graduates.
- Your course contains a wiki.
Regular Course Copy
If your course is not a “Special Case,” you can copy your course from a previous course in a few clicks:
- Open the new Blackboard course shell and delete any existing menu items. You need to delete these menu items because new ones will copy over from your previous course. Note: Some courses may not have any menu items.
- Open the previous Blackboard course you want to copy content from.
- Under Packages and Utilities under Control Panel. Select Course Copy.
- Under Select Copy Type, from the drop-down list, select “Copy Course Materials into an Existing Course.”
- To the right of the Destination Course ID text box, click the Browse button. This will open a pop-up window where you may choose your new course ID (i.e. your new Blackboard course shell). Click Submit. Your new course ID will now display in the text box.
- Now, Select the course materials to be copied into the destination course. To simply copy your entire course, click the Select All button.
- Note: If your previous course had a discussion board, select Include only the forums, with no starter posts under Discussion Board. This moves the discussion board forum but removes all of the student and instructor posts. If you leave the “Include starter posts for each thread in each forum (anonymized)” option selected under Discussion Board, Bb will copy all of the previous student’s posts, and it will be necessary to delete them manually.
- In the File Attachments section, ensure that “Copy links and copies of the content” is selected. Click Submit.
Do not interact with the course until the copy process is completed.
Some courses may take longer to copy depending on the size and complexity of the course. You will receive an email notification when the copy is completed. Please forward any error messages to bbhelp@uark.edu.
Once the previous course content has been copied, open the new destination course to ensure the content and course menu were copied properly.