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Blackboard course unit activation: Start of the year and semester

Blackboard course unit activation must take place before the start of teaching for each semester.

For 2024-25 Academic year:

  • Semester 1 teaching begins for UG and PGT courses on Monday 23 September 2024
  • Semester 2 teaching begins on Monday 27 January 2025

Pre-activation considerations

Before you activate your Blackboard course unit there are two aspects you will need to consider:

  1. Whether to create a new Bb space afresh with your School most recent Standard Course Structure, or to rollover last year's course.
    *Note that if you follow this second option, after rolling over the content, you will have to remove unwanted files, update content on the pages, remove rolled over Turnitin assignments, etc.
  2. Consider how early should your Bb course unit become available to your students.
    The default Campus Solutions start date for Semester 1 and All-Year courses is 16 September 2024 (i.e. 1 week before teaching starts) at the time of activating your course unit:

    1. If you choose the default option (1 week before course start date as recorded in Campus Solutions) students will see your course from 9 September 2024 (i.e. 2 weeks before teaching starts).
    2. If you choose the option: Course start date as recorded in Campus Solutions, students will see your course from 16 September 2023  (i.e. 1 week before teaching starts)

Canvas readiness

In addition to the steps above all course leaders are being asked to prepare their courses ahead of the move to Canvas from September 2025 by giving them a 'spring clean' and applying alt-text to images. You can find out more information about this on the Humanities Teaching Academy website.

Activate your 2024-25 Blackboard course unit

Follow the steps in this 2024-25 guide to activate your Bb course unit:  How to activate Blackboard courses (STAFF)

Post-activation

You may find the following documents useful:

Post-activation Checklist
http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=50025

How to Set up a New Blackboard Course after Activation
https://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=63932

How to Copy Content to your New Blackboard Course
https://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=49915