Importing Your Course

Page updated June 14, 2022

If you are planning to import your course from Blackboard, please watch the video below.

 

Blackboard Elements That Don’t Import Into D2L Brightspace

Once you move your course from Blackboard to D2L Brightspace, you will need to do a thorough review to make sure your content is looking and working correctly. Not all Blackboard features exist in D2L Brightspace.  In this case, you will need to adapt or rework your content.

Below is a list of course elements from Blackboard that will not copy over to D2L Brightspace when you are importing your course, including workarounds or D2L Brightspace features that you can replace with:

  • Empty folders: empty folders in your Blackboard course will migrate to D2L Brightspace as a webpage rather than a module. You may delete these before importing them.
  • Blogs and wikis: these do not transfer over to D2L Brightspace, since it does not have a blog or wiki tool.
    • You can recreate your blog using discussion topics.
    • For wikis, you can link a Google document that is open for editing by the class.
  • Blackboard quizzes:
    • Some special characters do not import correctly, so review that your quizzes are still working and double-check for formatting issues after moving to D2L Brightspace. 
    • Hotspot and Quiz Bowl questions do not copy over to D2L Brightspace (D2L does not have these question types available). You will need to recreate and adapt these questions in D2L Brightspace.
    • The Blackboard Quiz filter does not copy over to D2L Brightspace. If you have specific question types (like True/False) from a pool with more than one question, you will need to remake these questions with the proper question type in D2L Brightspace.
  • Rubrics: these may not copy over if they are complex. It may be easier to recreate your rubric in D2L Brightspace rather than importing it from Blackboard.
  • Journals: these do not copy over to D2L Brightspace as it does not have this feature.
  • Blackboard discussion forums:
    • If you’ve created a thread that students must reply to in Blackboard, you’ll need to recreate these in D2L Brightspace as these instructor-started threads do not copy over to D2L Brightspace.
    • If you’ve used the Blackboard option of “blocking students from posting starting threads”, you’ll need to recreate these in D2L Brightspace as the posts and replies by students do not copy over to D2L Brightspace.
  • Blackboard group discussions: these import over as a class discussion in D2L Brightspace which is not the same. 
    • You will need to recreate these group discussions by deleting the class discussions within D2L Brightspace, then populating your Discussion forum, and recreating these group discussions within D2L Brightspace groups.
  • Narrated PowerPoint files:  these will not import to D2L Brightspace if they are a PPT or PPTX. Attempting to import a course with narrated these PowerPoint files will result in an incomplete importation with missing content. To resolve this:
    • Download and save your narrated PowerPoint files from Blackboard
    • Delete the narrated PowerPoint files in Blackboard before importing your course to D2L Brightspace
    • Convert the downloaded narrated PowerPoint files to an MP4 video
    • Upload MP4 videos to your Google Drive
    • After importing your course to D2L Brightspace,  use the links from Google Drive to share your narrated PowerPoint videos