A message from the Centre for Academic Excellence:
Following an extensive migration process, faculty and staff will have access to their initial group of migrated courses within Brightspace within the next 48 hours. Courses from Winter 2023 (term 1231), Spring 2023 (term 1232), and 2022 to 2023 apprenticeship (term 1225) will be migrated into Brightspace, and will be tied to the employee ID of the official instructor.
Courses from Fall 2023 (term 1234) are expected to be migrated after December 15, and available to you by January 2, 2024.
Migrated courses are intended to serve as content repositories. The migrated courses will not be the courses that students are taught from in Winter 2024. Any changes made to migrated course content cannot be recovered within Brightspace (only manually from Blackboard). Please see the FAQ below for best practices for adapting course content.
Teaching courses will be created in Brightspace following the usual Niagara College timelines. Once the courses that are to be used for teaching are available in December, faculty and staff can copy some, or all, of their content into these courses for use by students.
If after 48 hours there is a course you do not have access to from the terms scheduled for migration please message your Associate Dean’s Assistant by end of day Thursday, November 23.
Migrated content training
Additional faculty and staff LMS training and resources focused on working with migrated courses will be offered by the CAE. Online resources are now available in the Working with Migrated Courses module of the Brightspace Training Resources. Training webinars on Working with Migrated Courses in Brightspace will also be available:
While the migration process will move most content and assessments, faculty and staff may notice some differences in their courses once they are in Brightspace. This training will highlight some of these differences, and point to ways to address them. In particular, migration training will look at:
- Comparing tools and features between Blackboard and Brightspace
- Course content
- Assessment tools
- Evaluation tools
- Communication tools
- Copying migrated content to live courses
If you experience unexpected challenges with your migrated content or would like to discuss alternatives for functionality that are not available in Brightspace, please book a consultation with the CAE using the booking calendar, or email [email protected].
Frequently asked questions about course migration
What should I do first?
Please review your migrated course to familiarize yourself with how it looks in Brightspace. Each migrated course has an Overview module, which contains a document to walk you through some preliminary steps and tasks that will help you to get your course ready.
What is the best way to change course content in Brightspace?
For faculty who plan on making substantive changes to course content, you may wish to Export the course as a Brightspace Package prior to completing any updates. Many tools do offer the option to restore deleted elements (i.e. Assignments, Discussions, Announcements, and Quizzes). The option to restore a deleted element can be found at the top of a tool’s page, under More Actions.
How do I know what parts of my course did not migrate properly?
Your migrated course will have a Migration Exception Log located at the bottom of the Table of Contents. This log will list things that did not migrate properly and, where applicable, will refer you to the original item in Blackboard.
How would I find a Blackboard equivalent tool in Brightspace?
The CAE has put together a comprehensive comparison sheet in the Working with Migrated Courses module that outlines Brightspace tools that closely align with the often-used features and functions in Blackboard.
What functions do not exist in Brightspace that did in Blackboard?
Brightspace does not currently offer blog, journal, or wiki tools. If you were using these tools in Blackboard, any content will be converted to a web page for you to access since there is no equivalent tool.
There are also a number of test question types that do not exist in Brightspace’s quizzes tool. These question types include hot spot, jumbled question, file response, and quiz bowl. These questions cannot be migrated into Brightspace, and will be noted in the Migration Exception Log.
Why do my grades look different than they did in Blackboard?
The grade centre/grades tool in both systems work somewhat differently, and the migration will not capture and interpret all of the data. Some manual adjustments will be required. Within the grades tool, you will likely find that assessments or categories are no longer weighted properly, or you may discover that some aspects of the grade centre are present but no longer needed. These issues are usually quick to fix, but if you encounter challenges, please consider attending migration training or book a consult.
How do I move my content from my migrated course into the course I’m teaching from?
Once your courses have been set up for Winter 2024, you can move some or all of your content from your migrated courses. Instructions on moving content are available in the Import/Export/Copy Components section of the Creating and Curating Content module in the Brightspace Training Resources.
