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 Assistant	Similar permissions to an instructor – for staff involved with supporting instructors and students with course content and administration.	Yes	Yes	Banner or manual
School Office Administrator	Same permissions as a course instructor. This role is given to any admin staff registered as a module instructor in Banner.	Yes	Yes	Banner 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.	No	Yes – view only	Manual – 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 Viewer	Anyone 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.

• Contact the relevant student office if you have any queries about a student, or auditing student, enrolments – students need to be added to Blackboard via Banner enrolments.
• If you are trying to add a class from another module to your Blackboard course, please request merged enrolments instead – see more information on merged enrolments.
• If you are adding students to an arbitrary (custom) course, then see this guide to the different types of Blackboard courses for information on more effective course setups.
• Students can be manually added to courses that are not connected to Banner teaching modules, for example, staff training courses.
• Contact ServiceLine if you need advice on your course setup and enrolments.

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:

• New academic staff who will be responsible for teaching on a module: Contact your Faculty CQA office or fill out this form to request to be enrolled as an Instructor via Banner.
• Existing academic staff who are teaching a new module: Contact your Faculty CQA office who can add you to the module as an Instructor in Curriculum Manager and Banner.
• Academic and support staff who are not course instructors; such as PG Teaching Assistant, Programme Lead, Moderator or Supervisor  (if you need access to the module year on year) Contact your Faculty CQA office or fill out this form to request to be enrolled as a Teaching Assistant via Banner.
• SES Administrator access who also require access to Banner Gradebook: fill out this form to request to be enrolled on modules via Banner.
• Staff not directly involved with teaching and who do not require Banner enrolment: ask a course instructor or your student office team to enrol you on the Blackboard course manually with an appropriate course role.
• Instructors who need access to previous years’ Blackboard modules: contact your school office or a module instructor, or raise a ServiceLine ticket and you can be added to earlier courses manually.

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.

• 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.

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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.

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.

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.