The following article provides information on importing and searching for courses in Blackboard.
Course and Enrollment Import
NOTE
The Data Integration needs to be configured before you can import courses and enrollments from Blackboard into Course Evaluations & Surveys.- This feature allows the CES Administrator to select and import courses as well as student and instructor enrollments directly into your Course Evaluations & Surveys course evaluation projects.
- To access the import screen, navigate to the Courses tab of the project and select Data Import > Blackboard
Re-Sync Courses and Clear Synced Courses
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Re-Sync Courses
- This option allows you to refresh the data source to create a searchable list of Blackboard courses to import your courses and enrollments.
Note: Re-syncing courses does NOT make any changes to the data in your LMS. - When to use Re-Sync Courses:
- If courses have never been synced before (new integration).
- If courses have been added to Blackboard since the last re-sync that you wish to import.
- After clicking Clear Synced Courses (see below).
- After clicking Re-Sync Courses, you will be presented with a dialogue box that will give you the option to re-sync specific courses or those within given Blackboard terms. You do not have to select any option here if you wish to sync all courses in your Blackboard.
- Completion time for your courses re-sync will be based on the size of the sync. You can check the status of your course re-sync via the Notifications widget on the Home page of Course Evaluations & Surveys and also receive an email.
Note: Although courses may appear in the search during the sync, it is recommended that you wait until the sync completes before importing courses. - Once the Re-Sync Courses completes, the timestamp will populate to advise you of the last time courses were re-synced.
- This option allows you to refresh the data source to create a searchable list of Blackboard courses to import your courses and enrollments.
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Clear Synced Courses:
- Institutions who change courses information in the LMS, such as deleting courses or building new course sections for new terms, should utilize the Clear Synced Courses feature to keep the data source aligned with their recent changes.
- The Clear Synced Courses function allows you to clear your previously synced courses from the searchable list, i.e. your data source.
Note: clearing synced courses will NOT affect any courses already imported into the project. Once you clear your synced courses, you will need to select Course Re-Sync before importing.
Searching Courses
- Once your courses have been re-synced, you are ready to import your courses into the Course Evaluations & Surveys Project.
- To access the import screen, navigate to the Courses tab of the project and select Data Import > Blackboard
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Search Blackboard Courses
Use available filter options to search for the desired courses to import.
- Term (Optional): Select the Blackboard Term to search courses, default is All Terms.
- Course Created & Date (Optional): Filter courses by Bb course created date.
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Filter:
- Course ID: Select to search courses by keywords in Bb Course ID.
- Course Name: Select to search courses by keywords in Bb Course Name.
- Course Description: Select to search courses by keywords in Bb Course Description.
- Instructor: Select to search courses by keywords in Bb Instructor Name.
- Data Source Key (DSK): Select to search courses by their Data Source Key in Bb.
- Available: This option pertains to course availability in Bb. Default setting includes both Yes (course is Available in Bb) and No (course is Non-Available in Bb) selected. You can control this setting to only select Available or Non-Available courses.
- Disabled: This by default will include Bb Disabled courses, and can be deselected if desired. The system checks ROW_STATUS of a course and if not selected, only enabled courses are returned. (blackboard.admin.data.IAdminObject.RowStatus.ENABLED)
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More Options:
- Click More Options to filter by additional course criteria, including: Course ID, Course Name, Course Batch Unique ID, and Data Source Key (DSK).
- You can also paste specific Blackboard Course IDs into the large textbox, one per line, and click Search.
- Once you have chosen your search criteria, click Search.
- From the search output, select the courses you want included in your transfer into your Project.
Note: Select All option selects all courses found across all pages. - The default information that is transferred to Course Evaluations & Surveys is Course ID (External Course Key), Course Title, and Usernames.
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Filtering your Import for Blackboard Merged Courses (Optional): If you use the Blackboard Course Merge feature in Blackboard, this option allows you to filter your import to Import Parent Courses Only, or Import Children Courses Only, or Import All (both Parent and Children courses in the merged courses relationship). The default setting is Import Parent Courses Only.
- Merged courses in Blackboard aggregates enrollments from the child(ren) course(s) into the parent course.
- When using the Import Parent Courses Only option the parent course will be imported into your project with all aggregated enrollments.
- When using the Import Children Courses Only option the children courses will be imported into your project with their separated enrollments.
- When using the Import All option the parent and child(ren) course(s) will be imported into your project with aggregated enrollments in the parent course and separated enrollments in each child(ren) course(s).
NOTE
When using the merged courses import filtering options all courses in the parent/child relationship must be selected for the import filter to function.
When using the Import All option enrollments could be "duplicated" in the parent and child course, depending on your enrollments in Blackboard. -
Blackboard Groups (Optional; Blackboard version dependent): You can leverage Groups and Group Sets that are set up within Blackboard to then setup course evaluations specific to each group within the course, and to select which role within the group should be used to serve as the instructor role within the course evaluation process. Using this feature will automatically create separate course evaluation sections within Course Evaluations & Surveys for each group within the selected Blackboard courses.
- Enable this option by selecting the checkbox to Create a unique course section for each group.
- All Blackboard Group Sets are selected by default, and this can be customized if using only specific group sets.
- Include Unavailable Groups. Default is to exclude Unavailable Groups.
- Customize which role(s) within the Groups should be used as instructor roles within Course Evaluations & Surveys. Default is to use Blackboard’s Instructor role.
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Select Users to Import: You can customize your import to only bring in student, instructor or TA enrollments, and omit specific user properties in the import. The default is to import student, instructor and teaching assistant enrollments, along with their full name and email address.
- Blackboard Student Role: Import users with custom, Instructor or Teaching Assistant roles in Blackboard as Students into the Course Evaluations & Surveys Project.
- Blackboard Instructor Role: Import users with custom, Student or Teaching Assistant roles in Blackboard as Instructors into the Course Evaluations & Surveys Project.
- Blackboard TA Role: Import users with custom, Student or Instructor roles in Blackboard as Instructors into the Course Evaluations & Surveys Project.
- System-Wide User Availability: This option allows you to import users based on their Blackboard system availability. For instance, Blackboard users can be Disabled at the Blackboard system level, while still Available in a course. Enrollment in the course must be Available to import into Course Evaluations & Surveys regardless of the selection here.
- Create Unique Course Evaluations & Surveys Course Sections Per Instructor (Optional): One approach for Team-Taught Courses is to have the system automatically create separate course sections for each instructor in a course – and the entire survey would then be repeated for each instructor in the course. Note, Course Evaluations & Surveys offers another and more common approach for Team-Taught Courses, in the Survey section of Course Evaluations & Surveys where you can automatically have specific survey questions repeat on your survey for each instructor in a team-taught course.
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Generate Course-Level Survey Start/End Dates Based on Blackboard Course End Dates (Optional): With this feature, you can automatically generate course-level survey dates for Course Evaluations & Surveys that control when surveys for specific course will start and end, all based on the course’s end date setup in Blackboard. Note this is an optional step, if you don’t setup anything in this step, Course Evaluations & Surveys will use the Project Dates you setup in Course Evaluations & Surveys.
- Generate Course-Level Report Access Dates Based on Blackboard Course End Dates (Optional): Like the above Course-level Survey Date feature, you can control when instructors and administrators are able to access results in the same way, based on the course’s start/end date setup in Blackboard. If left unselected, Course Evaluations & Surveys will use the Project Dates to determine results access for instructors and administrators.
- Data Import Name (Optional) : Give your transfer a name to help reference it in the automated confirmation email that is sent to you when the transfer is completed. Click on embedded links within the content of the email to access imported course detail.
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Import Data: Click Import Data and all course, student, and instructor information will be transferred into your Course Evaluations & Surveys Project. Once the import has been completed you will see the status of the import on the Notifications widget on the Home page of Course Evaluations & Surveys, and you can also elect to receive an email alert confirming the import by checking the check box in this step.
Note: You can upload up to 440 characters for a Course Code and Course Unique ID. These values may be truncated throughout your PDF Reporting.- Your Blackboard Import Notification will include an embedded link, that once clicked on will direct the CES Administrator to the Course Import/Delete Log within Course Evaluations & Surveys. This link is valid for 30 days. This log will contain additional information on the courses you brought into your project.
- Your Blackboard Import Notification will include an embedded link, that once clicked on will direct the CES Administrator to the Course Import/Delete Log within Course Evaluations & Surveys. This link is valid for 30 days. This log will contain additional information on the courses you brought into your project.