Follow this guide: Activate Blackboard Courses.

The academic lead for the unit must activate the Blackboard course space in the my.manchester staff portal. There are a number of choices available to academic lead at this stage depending on whether this is a new course or a course you are rolling forward from a previous year. See this Knowledge Base article.

Contact your school/discipline/program administrator (whichever is appropriate) to confirm that the class has been set up and that you have been registered in Campus Solutions as instructor on the course.

This may be an indication that something has been configured incorrectly in Campus Solutions. Please contact your school/discipline/program administrator (whichever is appropriate) to confirm that the class has been set up and enrolled correctly.

As soon as you can see your classes listed in the Future tab of My Manchester > My Courses, you can activate your Semester 1 and All Year courses. 

If the course was running last year, had a Blackboard course and has the same course code this year, you will be able to 'roll-forward' the old course into the new course space during the activation process (i.e. you will see the previous version of the course listed in the drop-down menu under 'Choose a template...').

Once activated, courses may take up to 24 hours to appear in your MyManchester list and in Blackboard.

However, we recommend that you consider choosing the 'Standard Course Structure' template for your School/discipline (Standard Course Structure) from the drop-down 'Choose a template...' list and then copying across the material you need from your previous course. This will ensure you only have the current material in your course. If you have material from an old standard course structure in your course, this is likely to be out of date. See these guides on how to activate and copy course material.

If you are having difficulties with activation, please see the section above for 'Academic staff'.

Full details on How to activate Blackboard courses (STAFF) are available in the Knowledge Base.

By default, courses are accessible to students one week before the start of the semester unless the course leader decides to open the Blackboard course earlier (typically for administrative and preparatory tasks).

For course dates see here.

Be aware of these Campus Solution dates at the time of activating your course units, as your choice for start date will determine the visibility to students of your course unit on the dates above-mentioned.

New

• A Blackboard space will appear under the 'Future' tab for new courses once they have been scheduled and you have been given Primary Instructor access by your School administrator in Campus Solutions. You can then activate your course, see How to activate Blackboard courses (STAFF) in the Knowledge Base. 
• Normally you will be starting from scratch, and in most cases, you should choose Standard course structure - [School] from the drop-down templates list (these are also referred to as Standard Course Structure). 
• If, however, you want to copy content from another course into this one, you will need to choose TEMPLATE-I1000 UoM template, which will give you a clear space. You will need to be Primary Instructor on both courses to copy from one to another. A guide on How to copy courses in Blackboard (STAFF) is available on the Knowledge Base. 
• If you've activated your course with the wrong template, please don't do any development work in your course and get in touch with the eLearning team

Change of course code

• When you activate a course which has a different course code from the previous year, you will NOT be given the option to choose the 'previous version of the course' from the templates drop-down list. In this case, you will need to choose the template for your School or discipline area.
• Once you have activated this new course (which may take up to 24 hours to appear), you will be able to copy your last year’s content into it. A guide on How to copy courses in Blackboard (STAFF) is available on the Knowledge Base. You will need to be Primary Instructor (or another role permission to copy) on both the previous year and new year course units. Note that your copied course will not have any of the previous student enrolments or student-generated content - this is the same as if you were rolling-forward.
• If you experience any problems with copying your course, perhaps because the course is too large, please get in touch with the eLearning team.

• New courses which have had their School template applied will automatically have the latest version of the SCS.
• Courses which have been rolled forward or copied will not have the latest SCS updates. Check what new updates apply for your School, and to find out how to add them to your course.

All Semester 1/Full Year Blackboard course spaces and Semester 2 course spaces should be available to students one week before the scheduled course start date. See key dates for Blackboard.

If you have materials from previous years you would like to copy across follow this guide useful: How to copy courses in Blackboard.

You may also find this screencast useful: How to copy from one Bb course to another.

If you seem to have a small number of registered student or no students contact your school/discipline/program administrator (whichever is appropriate) to confirm that the class has been set up and enrolled correctly.

Ask student to check s/he has completed registration for your unit. If so contact your school/discipline/program administrator (whichever is appropriate) to confirm that the student(s) are enrolled on the course in Campus Solutions.

Your students will have continued access to previous Blackboard courses.

Staff will also continue to have access to previous courses. After the end date in Campus Solutions they will be moved to the 'Ended' tab in My Manchester > My Courses. On the Blackboard homepage, they will appear on the 'Past Years' Courses' tab.

You may also find this article useful:

• Preparing Blackboard 9 courses for start of year and Semester 2 (STAFF)

Contact your School PS team to request that your colleague is added to your course - via Schedule of Classes in Campus Solutions but as a secondary instructor.

For general University guidance, see the TLSO's Guide to the taught degree regulations.

Students who are resitting without attendance require access to the lecture notes of the current delivery of the course (ie 2017-18). For courses supported using Blackboard the equivalent resources need to be made available eg:

• Weekly course/lecture notes
• Reading lists (if these are not available via Link2lists)

The eLearning team can advise on the easiest way of downloading the materials.

Your Blackboard course(s) should be visible to you in My Manchester. If you cannot see a Blackboard course you are expecting to see, please contact your School administrator in the first instance to make sure you have been added to the course in Campus Solutions.

We recommend that you attend Blackboard training or come to a drop in session organised by the eLearning team. Details of training and drop in sessions are on the Humanities eLearning website. 

If you would like support with adding content, developing your course structure, or working with a particular aspect of Blackboard, you can:

• Contact your School learning technologist
• Contact the eLearning team and request a 1:1.
• Attend one of our training sessions.

• All teaching material must be requested via Reading Lists online.
• Follow the Library’s user guides to update or create your reading lists.
• All the information you need about reading lists can be found in this recent news article.

Below is a presentation that staff can use when introducing students to Blackboard. Students should be encouraged to read through this before getting in touch for help.  These slides are best viewed in Chrome or Firefox browsers.

See also

• Blackboard induction (video)
• Turnitin induction (video)
• Finding and understanding your feedback in Turnitin (video)

Please refer to this Campus Solutions training guide, visit the Student Records web page, and/or contact the Student System Office (Tel: 65444. email: cs.records@manchester.ac.uk).

Course conveners should be given ‘Primary Instructor’ role in the Schedule of Classes. All other academic staff involved in teaching on the course should be given ‘Secondary instructor’ role. For the correct roles refer to pages 14-15 in the Campus Solutions training guide.

The ‘Admin’ role in CS does not grant access to Blackboard. Assign yourself as "Course Coordinator".