Preparing your Blackboard Course for the Semester (How-to)

Before the start of the semester, you should get your Blackboard course ready for students. Students begin looking for their course material on the first day of classes and can easily become frustrated if the course is not yet set up or is missing content. For more information, see Best Practices: Course Content.

Reuse Past Course Material

• For reusing previous course materials in Blackboard you can copy your course content from one course to another, see Course Copy.
  • Sharing already created content with/from a colleague? Submit a Blackboard Ultra Request and choose "Share/Copy Course Content."  
• To update your content dates after you've copied your course, see Batch Edit.

Create New Content

• For creating course content, see Create Content.
  • For details, see Adding Content, Assessment, and Communications Tools in Blackboard (How-to)
  • When creating graded items, be sure to use the "Due Date" feature to provide students with dates for course related events.  You may also add additional events outside of due dates, see Calendar.
    • Subscribe to the calendar to stay informed.
• To customize your course in Blackboard, see Customize Your Course.
• To see your course as a student would, see Student Preview.

Make Your Course Available to Students

• To make your course available to students, see Course Availability.
  • Note: If you have past dates in your course, students will be notified of late course expectations once the course is made available. It is best to update all dates before making your course available to students.

Teaching Assistants, Graders, or Facilitators

• For adding a Teacher Assistant or Grader, see Find Users to Enroll. Or you may request additional assistance by submitting a Blackboard Ultra Request - Select Add/Change/Remove User request.
• NOTE:
  • Please do not add students to your course that are registered.  This is an automated process and manual additions can cause issues withholding student access to the course.
  • Please do not add students to your course unless they are TA's or in some sort of tutoring role. They should either be enrolled in a tutoring course or hired by the university in some official capacity.

If you have any further questions, please request a consultation by submitting a Blackboard Ultra Request or contact the ITS Support Center at 515-271-3001.