Brightspace: Reviewing Your Blackboard Courses in Brightspace

Blackboard courses from Fall 2019 to Spring 2023 are in Brightspace. The outline below will walk you through how to review your content to make sure it is showing up correctly. It will also outline common issues to look for as you review. You may find it helpful to review the Brightspace Basics documentation before diving into your course review.

Accessing Brightspace

Go to my.sjf.edu
Click Launchpad in the top right
Click on Brightspace
Go to My Courses on the homepage and click on the course you want to access

Screenshot of the Brightspace homepage. In the top left there is text that says My Courses. There is an arrow pointing down to the right of it. Below that there are three boxes. Each box has an image and the name of a course. Below that, to the left, there is blue text that says View All Courses. To the right of that, there is the number three in parenthesis.

Reviewing Your Migrated Course

When you first log in to Brightspace, go to the My Courses widget and select the Converted option. This will show you your courses that were brought over from Blackboard.

Screenshot of the MyCourses widget on the Brightspace homepage. Across the top, there are five sections. Each section has unique text. The sections are: All, Pinned, 2022 Fall, 2023 Summer, Converted (there is a outlined pink box around this), and Non-Credit. Below that, there is a thin, black line. Below that, there are three images with text below. These signify three different course offerings.

Removing Course Materials

When Blackboard courses are brought into Brightspace, the Course Materials page comes in as a top-level page (or module in Brightspace). To fix that we'll move the modules underneath Course Materials and then delete the Course Materials module. To do that:

Go to Content in the course navigation and go to the Table of Contents
Click on Course Materials and the modules underneath should show up
Go to the first module and click the dot icon to the left of it. Click and drag it above the Course Materials page
Repeat for each of your modules.
Once all of the modules are moved, click on Course Materials and then click on the carrot icon to the right of the title and select Delete Module

Screenshot of the Brightspace Table of Contents. There is text to the left that says Table of Contents. To the right of that is a gray circle with numbers in black inside of it that say twenty-nine. Below that, there is an icon of two columns and four rows made up of dots. To the right of that is text that says Syllabus. To the right of that is a gray circle with the number one inside of it. Below that, there is an icon of two columns and four rows made up of dots. To the right of that, there is a pink outlined square around text that says Course Materials. To the right of that is a gray circle with the number twenty eight inside of it. Below that there is there is an icon of two columns and four rows made up of dots. To the right of that, there is text that's grayed out.

Screenshot of a Brightspace Module page titled Course Materials. To the right of the page name, there is a gray square with an arrow pointing down. There is a pink outlined box around the square. There is a dialog box open with options. The last option has a pink outlined square around it with text inside that says Delete Module.

Reviewing Content

Most of what is brought over from Blackboard will show up and display correctly. However, we do recommend that you review each item in your course to ensure that it is displaying/working.

To edit content:

If you do find things that aren't working, click the carrot icon to the right of the piece of content and look for the edit option (i.e. Edit HTML).
- For assignments, click on the name of the assignment and you should be able to edit/update/change. You can also hide content if you want to keep it but don't want it to be visible to learners.

Things to Check:

You'll also want to check the modules under table of contents to see if there are any submodules hiding there. Because of the way Blackboard is set up, we've noticed that often times there will be an unnecessary layer added to this structure. You can move sub-modules out from underneath modules by clicking the six dots to the left and dragging it up.
Links: check any links in the course to make sure they are working. You'll want to remove any Blackboard links. Links to YuJa, VoiceThread, or other tools will need to be updated as well.
Discussions: Brightspace handles Discussions differently. You can read more about that here. You'll want to review to make sure things are appearing correctly.
Quizzes: Quiz Questions: some types won't work/convert over
Journals/Blogs: will come over but only as files. You can re-build in a similar way using discussions and you would want to hide the files that come over via import

You can find a full checklist of items to review below.

Screenshot of a Brightspace Assignment listing on a Module page. There is an pink outlined box around an arrow icon.

Re-linking Graded Discussion Boards

If you bring over graded discussion boards to Blackboard, the link to the grade book column will break. The column still comes over and the discussion boards do as well so you really just have to re-link them.

Go to Other Course Tools in the red course navigation and click on Discussions
Go to the topic (in the blue area) and click the carrot icon to the right of it
Click Edit Topic
Scroll down and click on Ungraded below Grade Out Of and it will turn into a box that says points.
To the right of that, click on the button that says In Grade Book and choose Edit or Link to Existing
On the next page, click Link to an existing grade item and find the grade item for the discussion. Click OK.
The points box will automatically fill based on the point value associated with the grade item
Click Save and Close at the bottom right

Things to Check in Your Brightspace Course

The document to the left is meant to help as you review your content and begin editing. The first section covers areas to review and the second is a table that shows the comparative tools between Brightspace and Blackboard.

If you want to download a PDF, click here.

We know that some of this is going to be tricky, please reach out to the DePeters Family Center at cite@sjf.edu and we can meet to review and help.

Next Steps

You eventually may want to add other instructors, you can find instructions on how to do that here.
You may want to request a sandbox where you can work and test without interrupting your content. You can request one here.
If you need to rebuild content or build additional content, this page on course building will help.

When using educational technology tools, be FERPA aware. To learn more, visit the Registrar's FERPA Guidelines site.