There are occasionally situations in which a course section on Colleague is "cancelled" for the purpose of modifying the course's name or ID. In these situations, extra steps need to be taken to ensure that the corresponding Blackboard shell is modified (instead of a new Blackboard shell being created), and that the enrollment data is re-mapped so it will flow to this existing Blackboard shell. This article explains the steps that need to be taken to ensure that this occurs properly.
When a decision has been made for a course section to be cancelled in Colleague to be replaced (for the purpose of modifying the course's name or ID, in which case the students, instructor, meeting times/dates, and content should remain the same), the following steps should be taken by Enrollment Services to ensure that the corresponding Blackboard course will not be adversely affected.
1. For the course section that will be cancelled, find the "Synonym". Write down/note this.
2. Change the Synonym in this section to be "99XXX" (where X = a sequential of numbers managed by Enrollment Services. The first occurrence should be 000, then 001, then 002...)
3. Create the "new" course section. When creating this, use the "Synonym" that had been used in the original course section.
4. After this process is complete, Notify Blackboard Administration and the Course Instructor to make them aware of this change. Blackboard Administration will then check after the next data sync that the Blackboard course has been updated properly.
The end result, if this is completed successfully:
- The existing course shell on Blackboard's NAME will change to reflect the name of the newly created course section, but the COURSE ID will remain the same.
- The content and enrollments on the existing course shell will remain the same.
- Future Student Adds/drops or faculty enrollments to the new section on Colleague will automatically be processed and applied on Blackboard to the existing Blackboard course shell.
NOTES:
- These steps should NOT be used every time a course section is cancelled - only in times where it is cancelled with the intention to immediately replace it.
- It’s important that these steps be performed in a timely succession so that a new shell does not automatically get created on Blackboard (which would lead to confusion among faculty and students). To avoid conflict with Blackboard Enrollment sync, It is not recommended to initiate this process at the mentioned times: 6:15-6:30 AM, 12:15-12:30 AM, 6:15-6:30 PM, 12:15-12:30 PM.