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MCC Daily Tribune

Transition of Blackboard Organizations

We thank you for your patience during our migration process this fall.  We still have more work to do! Many of you know that our Blackboard contract expires on December 21, 2022, leaving the Virtual Campus limited time to move some of the remaining content out of this space, which includes our "Blackboard Organizations". A Blackboard Organization is any space outside of an academic course, such as compliance training, college-wide spaces, department spaces, committee spaces, special interest groups, or sharing course resources. Brightspace does not have designated organizations as Blackboard did, so we must find the most appropriate long-term solution for each type of content working within the limitations of the new system. Some of the content in Blackboard Organizations should migrate to Brightspace, however, some content will need to find a more suitable alternative, such as other college-supported tools. 

The Virtual Campus performed an initial inventory of 260 existing Blackboard Organizations and made the following recommendations for each organization type. We will be contacting the current owners of the content with more details regarding saving content and moving it into its new home. We will move content in the phases listed below: 

Phase I - Move all existing compliance training to Brightspace (October). We will work with the existing owners of training courses, (for example, HR training, SPARC, RAPID, etc.) to move content out of Blackboard to Brightspace. Since the trainings require the tracking of assessments and large college-wide enrollment, Brightpace is the best home for this content.  Existing spaces can still use Blackboard through 12/21/22, but we will be starting to move this content slowly because of its complexity. 

Phase II - Move the existing Advising Training Series (ADV) and the Environmental Training Series (EHS) to Brightspace. Additionally, move the Faculty Senate and Teaching and Creativity Center to  Brightspace (beginning of November). The ADV and EHS series require the collection of assessments for a college-wide audience. Existing spaces can still use Blackboard through 12/21/22 during the transition. Brightspace allows for college-wide enrollments for the Faculty Senate and TCC. We will contact the owners and determine the best time to move content within the next month. 

Phase III -  We recommend that any current Blackboard Organizations that resemble special interest groups, department committees, content repositories, and club spaces use Microsoft Teams (mid-November) The institution has an institutional license for this tool. Microsoft Teams allows for collaboration, a file repository, and discussion. Teams allow for the leader to control the creation and management of their enrollments.  Teams can be private or public. We will share basic information on how to use Teams with the groups that currently fall into this special Blackboard Organization category. Group leaders should consider signing up for the free Teams Training through the SUNY CPD to get a basic understanding of the tool's functionality.  Your Blackboard materials can be downloaded from the organization's content collection and uploaded to the Files area of Teams. 

Other Special Cases:

 If departments need to share materials through the LMS (such as a course shell, common assignments, etc.) with the ability to have others view or copy materials, a Brightspace practice course is the best place.

  • Faculty can enroll colleagues in a practice course using the Classlist tool. You can add users with student access (view only) or faculty access (to copy materials). 
  • Limitations: In order to add an individual to a course, one must have an MCC account to access Brightspace and you will not have the ability to unenroll users. Brightspace Guest accounts are not available at this time. 

If you have content that is public-facing material, please consider a college WordPress site. Please see the current Web Guidelines and submit a tech ticket for this request to the Web Team.

If you have any follow-up questions, please reach out to our Virtual Campus team. Please see our contact and support hours for the month. 

Andrea Gilbert
Instructional Technologies
10/12/2022