Blackboard – Manage course enrolment

Staff guide: how to correctly enrol staff and students on a course, course roles and permissions.

Introduction – the different ways users are enrolled in Blackboard courses.

Auto-enrolment via the Banner student information system

Most instructors and students should be enrolled in Blackboard via the Banner information system – see the introduction to the different types of Blackboard courses for more information on how users are auto-enrolled.

Updates to Banner enrolments will show in Blackboard within 24 hours.

Many administrative and management staff are auto-enrolled in Blackboard courses as Instructors and Teaching Assistants either via Banner or iSolutions enrolment feeds. We are working on improvements to this process and if you have any comments or would like to get involved, please let us know via a ServiceLine ticket.

Manual Enrolments

Non-teaching staff can be manually added to a Blackboard course with the appropriate course role to ensure they have correct permissions, and course users know who they are.

Students can be manually added to Blackboard courses which are not connected to Banner.

Overview of Course Roles

To access a Blackboard course, users must be enrolled on the course with an appropriate course role. See sections below for how to enrol staff and students correctly.

Course Role Use and notes on permissions Can edit content Access to Grade Centre Enrol via:
Student For students enrolled in a module or auditing students.  No Only personal via Tools/ MyMarks Banner
Instructor Instructors have full access to edit course content, user management and the Grade Centre. Only staff responsible for teaching the module should be enrolled as an instructor and this should be via Banner, Use other appropriate roles for non-teaching staff. Yes Yes Banner 
Teaching AssistantSimilar permissions to an instructor – for staff involved with supporting instructors and students with course content and administration.  
 
 
Yes Yes Banner or manual 
School Office AdministratorSame permissions as a course instructor. This role is given to any admin staff registered as a module instructor in Banner.YesYesBanner or manual
Course Builder For anyone assisting with creating and editing course content who is not responsible for teaching or supporting students.  
 
 
Yes No Manual 
Marker Anyone assisting with marking who is not an instructor or teaching assistant. Full access to marking student submissions and activities.  No Yes Manual 
External Examiner Used for external examiners: view-only permissions on all Blackboard content, including student activity and submissions.  EEs will have marking access to Turnitin submissions, but won’t be able to edit or delete the assignment. NoYes – view onlyManual – or contact the faculty office for local processes. 
Auditing Instructor Give other staff view-only access to your course.  No Yes – view only Manual 
Course Content ViewerAnyone needing view-only access, but without access to student grades and info.  No No Manual 
Pre-Sessional Instructor Can manage groups and access the Grade Centre, but has limited access to delete or edit the course content. Cannot delete Groups.  Yes – but limited. Yes Manual 
Library Staff Library staff involved in your module or subject area can enrol to support staff and students with content and delivering skills sessions.  Yes No Self enrol via Staff- enroller 

How to enrol students

It should not be necessary to manually add a student to ANY Blackboard course. If a student, or group of students, needs to add to Blackboard, this is an indication that there is an issue with their Banner enrollment or with the Blackboard course setup.

How to enrol staff members or request course access for yourself.

Please see the list below for the appropriate way to enrol staff depending on role:

Adding a user manually

Please see the sections on staff and student enrolments above before using manual enrolment.

Course Instructors can be added manually if they need urgent access to current modules, but the CQA office will also need to add them in Banner.
Non-teaching staff can be added manually with an appropriate course role (not Instructor)

Students -It should not be necessary to add any students to a course manually. See the guide above for more information on the different options for enrolling students.

  • From your course Control Panel, expand Users and Groups and select Users.
  • Select Find Users to Enrol at the left of the page.
The "Find Users to Enrol" option is in the top left of the Users page.
The “Find Users to Enol” option is in the top left of the Users page.
  • Type or Paste a username OR select Browse to search and select users (don’t type and Browse). Only users that aren’t already enrolled in your course will be identified in a search for users.
  • Select or type as many usernames as needed. Separate multiple usernames with commas.
  • Select an appropriate course Role.
  • Select Submit.
If you are pasting a user name into the Username box do not select Browse. 
Use Browse to search and select the username if you have not copied it.

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Change a user’s role in the course

  • From your course Control Panel, expand Users and Groups and select Users.
  • Search for the user and select the Options menu to the right of their username.
  • Select Change User’s Role in Course.
  • Choose a new role and Submit.
The user Option menu is located to the right of the user name.

Removing a user or un-enrolling from a course.

All enrolment changes for Banner courses must be made in Banner by the Student Office. Staff can also request to be removed from courses via this form.

We do not recommend deleting students from a course as this will remove their work and assignments (unless they are enrolled via Banner)

To remove a user:

  • From your course Control Panel, expand Users and Groups and select Users.
  • Search for the user(s) to be removed.
  • Select the checkboxes to the left of the users to be deleted.
  • Select Remove Users from Course
  • Select Submit

Troubleshooting common enrolment errors

You don’t have permission to enrol this user

  • Follow the instructions above carefully – if you Paste in a username and then select Browse you will get this error. Go straight to Submit after pasting the username.
  • You need to be an Instructor, Teaching Assistant or Course Builder to add and remove users.

You do not have permission to remove an Instructor

If the Instructor is enrolled in the module via Banner then they can only be removed via Banner.

Only course Instructors can remove other Instructors directly.

If you are a Teaching Assistant you can change the user’s role to something other than Instructor, and then remove them.

A user you have removed re-appears

You cannot manually remove a user who is added via Banner enrolments. Contact the student office to correct the Banner module enrolment.

The “user is already enrolled” or a user disappears from the course users list.

The user does not appear in the course users list, but when you try to enrol them you see a message to say they’re already enrolled.

This error occurs because the user has been dropped from the module in Banner and this will lead to a disabled Blackboard enrolment on this course.

  • For a current year course, ask your student office to correct the Banner enrolment. The student will reappear on the Blackboard course the following morning.
  • For a previous year’s course or where the students cannot be added via Banner then contact SeviceLine and request the Blackboard enrolment is re-enabled.

The student’s course activity and submissions will re-appear when the enrolment is re-activated.

Batch enrolment from a spreadsheet upload

Note – we do not recommend this please see the sections on staff and student enrolments above. If there is no other option for enrolling your users, then use this guide to prepare and upload a Batch file.

Prepare a Batch upload Spreadsheet of usernames and course roles.

Use the template below.

  • Add usernames to column A (make sure there are no leading or trailing spaces). See the Tip below if you need to extract usernames from a list of student emails.
  • Add the code for the course role to column F:
    S=Student, P=Instructor, T=Teaching Assistant, B=Course Builder, G=Marker, EX_EXAMINER=External Examiner, PS_Instructor=PreSessional Instructor.
  • Add the number 1 to column B,C,E.
  • Leave column D blank.
  • Delete heading row 1 if using the template.
  • Save as file type: CSV.
Spreadsheet layout columns A to F

Upload a Batch enrol spreadsheet to your course.

  • On the Control Panel, expand the Users and Groups section and select Users.
  • On the Users page, select Batch Enroll Users.
  • Select Browse to locate the batch file, and select Automatic as the Delimiter Type..
  • Select Submit.

Tip: a quick way to extract a list of usernames from a list of student emails

If you have a list of student emails in a spreadsheet you can use Find and Replace in Excel to remove the @soton.ac.uk from all the emails.

  • Copy and paste the list of student emails into Column A of the batch-enrol-template.
  • In Excel, select the Find and Select tool and select Replace.
  • In Find What – enter “@soton.ac.uk”.
  • In Replace with – leave blank.
  • Select Replace all.

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