In Blackboard Ultra, you can copy individual content items or all content items from one Ultra course to another. This process also applies to Blackboard Ultra organizations.

• Copy All Course Content
• Copy Individual Content Items

Please note: You will want to be in the destination course or organization — where you want the copied content to go. This is the opposite of copying content between Blackboard Classic courses.

Copy All Course Content

1. Navigate to the course or organization where you want the copied content to go.

2. Go to your course's Content page and click on the ellipsis (...) in the top right. From the list select Copy Content to be redirected to the Copy Content panel.

3. In the Copy Content panel, all your courses & organizations appear under the Your Courses and Organizations list. You can use the search to find courses by name or course ID.

4. Once you have located the Blackboard Ultra course you want to copy from, select the checkbox next to the name. Selecting this checkbox will copy all contents of the selected course and retain the contents settings and visibility.

5. Your selected course will appear in the panel to the right. After you have made your selection, select Start Copy and the copy action begins.

6. Status indicators on the Content page show the progress. A success message appears when the action is completed. Once completed, the copied content will appear within the course.

7. By default, all content will be hidden from students and will need to be made visible. More information on content visibility be found here: Content Visibility.

Please note: The Copying wheel will spin anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes before it confirms your copy. But if you refresh your page, the content will already be copied into the course.

Copy Individual Content Items

1. Navigate to the course or organization where you want the copied content to go.

2. Go to your course's Content page and click on the plus icon (+) at your point of insertion. From the content list, select Copy Content to be redirected to the Copy Content panel.

3. In the Copy Content panel, all your courses & organizations appear under the Your Courses and Organizations list. You can use the search to find courses by name or course ID.

4. Once you have located the Blackboard Ultra course you want to copy from, drill down into the course's content by clicking on the arrow to the right. The folders shown correlate with the top-level navigation menu items from the selected Blackboard course.

5. Continue clicking on the arrow to drill down into the content to locate the items that you need.

6. Select the checkbox next to each item that you would like to copy. Your selected items will appear in the panel to the right.

7. After you have made your selections, select Start Copy and the copy action begins.

8. Status indicators on the Content page show the progress. A success message appears when the action is completed. Once completed, the copied content will appear within the course.

9. You can repeat this process as many times as needed to copy all the needed content.

10. By default, all content will be hidden from students and will need to be made visible. More information on content visibility be found here: Content Visibility.

Please note: The Copying wheel will spin anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes before it confirms your copy. But if you refresh your page, the content will already be copied into the course.

Please note: Once your copy is complete, please confirm the copied content is as expected. Some content, such as Course Links and Discussions, may be copied into the bottom of the Content Page rather than the Module or Folder it was linked within. If this happens, you can drag and drop content into the correct Module or Folder. 

More Information: Blackboard Help: Copy Content from Other Courses

When copying content from Blackboard Classic to Blackboard Ultra, we recommend copying item by item instead of doing a full course copy. While there are a lot of similarities between the two course views, there are several key differences in the structure and organization, accessibility, and functionality. All of which affect the content that is being copied. It is best practice to copy content item by item or “cherry-pick” the items you want. This method allows you to copy and organize content more efficiently and allows you to rethink your course structure.

Please note: You will want to be in the destination course — where you want the copied content to go. This is the opposite of copying content between Blackboard Classic courses.

Copy Individual Content Items

1. Navigate to the course or organization where you want the copied content to go.

2. Go to your course's Content page and click on the ellipsis (...) in the top right. From the list select Copy Content to be redirected to the Copy Content panel.

3. In the Copy Content panel, all your courses & organizations appear under the Your Courses and Organizations list. You can use the search to find courses by name or course ID.

4. Once you have located the Blackboard Classic course you want to copy from, drill down into the course's content by clicking on the arrow to the right. The folders shown correlate with the top-level navigation menu items from the selected Blackboard Classic course.

5. Continue clicking on the arrow to drill down into the content to locate the items that you need.

6. Select the checkbox next to each item that you would like to copy. Your selected items will appear in the panel to the right.

7. After you have made your selections, select Start Copy and the copy action begins.

8. Status indicators on the Content page show the progress. A success message appears when the action is completed. Once completed, the copied content will appear within the course.

9. You can repeat this process as many times as needed to copy all the needed content. By default, all content will be hidden from students and will need to be made visible. More information on content visibility be found here: Content Visibility.

Please note: The Copying wheel will spin anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes before it confirms your copy. But if you refresh your page, the content will already be copied into the course. Once your copy is complete, please confirm the copied content is as expected.

More Information: Blackboard Help: Copy Content from Other Courses

Do Not Recommend Copying

When it comes to copying content from Blackboard Classic to Blackboard Ultra, there are several items that we do not recommend copying. Copying these items may result in unexpected errors:

• Discussion Boards – Discussions in Blackboard Ultra are set up differently than in Blackboard Classic. Copying Discussions from one course view to another may not work as expected. An error may appear in the form of discussion board threads that cannot be deleted. It is best to create a new Discussion directly in Blackboard Ultra and manually copy and paste the text from the Discussion Board in Blackboard Classic. More information about Discussions can be found here: Discussions.

• LTI integrations – The LTI’S for Blackboard Classic and Blackboard Ultra are different and will not copy over.  LTI integrations can include Kaltura, Padlet, etc. If you need an LTI integration in your Blackboard Ultra course, you will need to create a new connection within the Ultra course and pull the LTI content into the course directly without copying from Blackboard Classic.

• 3rd party content – Copying 3rd party content from Blackboard Classic to Blackboard Ultra will create duplicates that are difficult to delete. This includes any content from publishers such as McGraw-Hill Connect, Cengage, etc. Oftentimes, these errors appear in the form of Gradebook columns and assignments that cannot be deleted without assistance from the publisher.

Recommendations When Copying Content

When it comes to copying content from Blackboard Classic to Blackboard, we recommend the following —

• Do not click the button that “magically” converts the course content from one course view to another. This will likely result in many errors, unstructured content, and inconsistencies.

• Do not do a full course copy from Blackboard Classic to Blackboard Ultra, using either of the “copy content” methods. Again, this will likely result in many errors, unstructured content, and inconsistencies.

• Instead, “cherry-pick” the items that you would like to bring over from the Classic course to the Ultra course. This method allows you to copy and organize content in smaller chunks and allows for better management of the content. This also provides the opportunity to rethink the course structure and what materials are needed. You will spend less time reviewing and updating content doing it this way than had you done it the two other ways mentioned above. More information can be found here: Copy Content from Blackboard Classic to Ultra.

• When copying items, have both your Classic and Ultra courses open side-by-side to compare as you go.

• Always review the content that you are copying over to ensure that everything looks and functions the way it is intended to.

• Never copy LTI links or 3rd party content from Blackboard Classic to Blackboard Ultra.

• When able to, create assessments (i.e. Discussions, Tests, Assignments, etc.) directly in the Blackboard Ultra course and copy and paste the text from the assessment in Blackboard Classic. This will limit the errors that you might receive during the copy process.

While there are a lot of similarities between the Blackboard Classic and Blackboard Ultra, there are several key differences in the structure and organization, accessibility, and functionality between the two-course views. Learn more about the differences here — Blackboard Ultra and Original Comparison Chart.

Copying content from Blackboard Classic to Blackboard Ultra is a different process than copying content between two Blackboard Classic courses. When you copy between two Classic courses, you go into the course that has the needed content and “push” that content out into the other Classic course. When copying to Blackboard Ultra, you want to begin in the Ultra course and “pull” the content in from the Classic course using the “copy content” option. Please note: Using the Classic course copy process for your Ultra course will result in broken and unconverted content. Once content from a Classic course has been “pushed” into an Ultra course, the only fix is to delete the entire Ultra course and create a new blank version.

If the system encounters problems with a content copy, an error report appears at the top of the courses Content page. Select View Exceptions to learn more about why the content failed to copy. Most exceptions are not significant and won't require any adjustment from you. On the Exceptions Report panel, view exceptions by category. Select a category to see a list of items that weren’t copied and a brief explanation. For some exceptions, we recommend you manually create this item in your new Ultra course. 

Expected Errors or "Issues"

• All items will be “hidden from students” – Any content item that is copied from Blackboard Classic to Blackboard Ultra will, by default, have its visibility set to “hidden from students”.

• Formatting issues – Blackboard Ultra has limited formatting options, including text formatting, to make content more accessible and user-friendly. If you copy content from Blackboard Classic to Blackboard Ultra, you may encounter errors around text and file formatting. Blackboard will automatically convert text to fit what is available in Ultra. 

  • Potential error messages –

    • “You may see a loss of formatting for text or files that you added in the text editor.”

    • “The folder description was shortened or lost formatting.”

    • “All unsupported font colors have been changed to black to ensure a sufficient contrast ratio for improved accessibility.”

    • “The custom color of the title was removed during conversion.”

  • Text Formatting Options –

    • Font style options in Ultra: Arial, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Noto, Open Sans, Times New Roman, and Verdana

    • Font color options in Ultra: Black, grey, purple, blue, green, and red

    • Descriptions: In Blackboard Ultra, item descriptions are limited to 750 characters of plain text; formatting of text is not available.
• Folder depth limitation – Blackboard Classic had an unlimited folder depth, meaning you could have a structure similar to this —

In Blackboard Ultra, folder depth is limited to two levels, meaning your structure will be similar to this —

After you have two levels of folders, Blackboard Ultra will not allow you to create another folder within any of the subfolders. The depth limit applies to folders and modules. Please note: A folder can be placed within a folder, and a folder can be placed within a module, but a module cannot be placed within a folder. A module will always be a top-level menu item.

• Course menu item becomes top-level folder/module – In Blackboard Classic, the menu items on the left side navigation menu are considered “top-level” items. Within that menu item, you could have unlimited items and folder depth to organize and store your course content. Since Blackboard Ultra is limited to a depth of two levels, copying the top-level menu item from Blackboard Classic may alter the structure of the content in Blackboard Ultra. For example, you may have a menu item in Blackboard Classic called “Weekly Learning Content” and within that, you have a folder (i.e. Folder #1) with another folder inside (i.e. Subfolder #1). If you were to copy that entire area into Blackboard Ultra, it would convert the “Weekly Learning Content” into a folder, and within that folder would be Folder #1 and Subfolder #1 on the same level due to the two-level depth restriction. If you want to copy an entire area from Classic to Ultra, we recommend omitting the top-level menu item (i.e. Weekly Learning Content) and only selecting the folders within the “Weekly Learning Content”.

• Unsupported tools, features, settings/options – There are some tools, features, and settings that are not supported or may have changed, in Blackboard Ultra. For example –

  • Wiki’s and Blog’s do not exist in Blackboard Ultra and will not copy over from a Blackboard Classic course.

  • Not all question types may be supported in Ultra the way they are in Classic.

  • Not all assessment types support “anonymous” grading/submission.

  • Release Condition settings may cause errors if they were set up in Classic and copied into Ultra.

  • By default, Blackboard Ultra does not have “weighted” or “total” columns set up in the gradebook. Those columns would need to be manually set up in the Ultra course.

In Blackboard Classic, you could use HTML code to "lockdown" specific content in a course. If the content is "locked down" in a Classic Course View site, it is not possible to copy or move the content to a Blackboard Ultra course. This video walks you through how to remove the HTML lockdown code from content in a Blackboard Classic course so that you may copy it into a Blackboard Ultra course.