Staff guide: most Blackboard courses and enrolments are set up via the Banner student information system. See this guide if you want a custom Blackboard course not connected to Banner.
Do I need a custom course?
Custom (arbitrary) should only be requested if it is not possible to set up the course in the Banner student information system or if we do not have an automated process for course set-up and user enrolment.
Please consider the following options before requesting a custom course:
- Use Banner module courses for all taught modules and assessments.
- You can request Banner zero credit modules for courses outside the assessed curriculum; for example, study skills sessions, introductory sessions, language skills, information ahead of module delivery etc.
- Module Leads can merge courses to teach closely related modules in a single Blackboard course. Enrolments can be merged into a single “parent” course so student enrolments stay in sync with Banner.
- Programme Leads can request a Programme Course to share programme-level communications and content.
- Request a Sandbox course if you want a course to test out ideas, practice skills, or start to build next year’s course.
- Consider SharePoint if you require a repository for documents, guides and information.
- Consider Teams if you are holding an external event.
Uses of custom courses
- Staff and student training and induction.
- School, department, faculty or university-level communication and content.
- Faculty Hub courses.
- Events – (these can also be zero-credit modules for university students or Teams for external users).
- Extra “sandbox” courses for designing new courses and experimenting.
If you have any questions please open a ticket with ServiceLine.
Request a new custom course
Follow this link to request a custom Blackboard course and we can discuss the setup and enrolments with you.
Migrating custom courses to Ultra
If you have a custom course for Foundation or Year 1 students, this should be migrated to Ultra for the 2024-25 academic year. Follow this link to request an Ultra version of an existing Blackboard course.
If your existing course has an enrolment feed, we can migrate the feed to the new Ultra course and remove it from the Original course.
If you have a QlikView report connected to the Blackboard Gradecentre, let us know when you request the course and we can ensure it stays in place.
See the Blackboard Ultra project SharePoint site for information on the migration timeline and Ultra training.
Staff and student enrolments on custom courses
There are several options for enrolment onto custom courses as detailed below:
Self-enrolment
If self-enrolment is enabled, users are invited to self-enrol when they follow the URL link to the course. You can still manually enrol users onto a course with self-enrolment enabled. This is a good option for many staff training courses if the training is not mandatory for all staff.
iSolutions enrolment feed
We can set-up a custom enrolment feed based on Banner or staff data. Please raise a Blackboard ServiceLine ticket, or note this requirement when you request a new course. Let us know which groups you would like to enrol and their course role. For example: All staff in your deprtment with the course role of “Student”.
If someone has been added to your course via an enrolment feed, you need to raise a ServiceLine ticket to change a user’s course role, or remove an individual or group from the course.
Manual enrolment
If you do not have many users, then manual enrolment is an option, but you will also need to remove users who no longer require access to the course.
You will enrol any participants (staff or students) in the course with the course role “Student”.
Accounts for external users
You can request temporary University conference accounts for any external participants. You can then manually enrol these accounts.
Tracking student engagement
Blackboard Analytics tools
See the Blackboard Analytics guides for information on tools available for monitoring student engagement and activity.
How to request a live Power BI report
You can request a Power BI report linked to a Custom Course Gradebook if you need more in-depth tracking, for example, to view student progress by facutly or department. Raise a ServiceLine ticket for the iSolutions Business Information & Insights team.
Troubleshooting
I have one group of students enrolled on multiple module codes, but I want to teach them via a single Blackboard course.
This use case is slightly tricky.
- If Banner module codes and titles can be organised to better reflect teaching and assessment, this is the best solution.
- Otherwise, choose a module to teach from and keep the others hidden. This is not ideal as it could cause issues with archiving and finding past assessments under the correct module code. If you want the main teaching module to have a different title in Blackboard, please contact ServiceLine and we can set this up in Blackboard.
- Occasionally, custom courses are used to deliver modules in this way. Please contact ServiceLine and the Blackboard team can discuss your requirements and suggest the best solution.