Using bFree to Convert Blackboard 6.3 Courses to Blackboard 7.3

Bernie Picklo Academic Technology Integrator University of Pittsburgh at Bradford 103F Fisher Hall 300 Campus Drive Bradford, PA 16701

Introduction In the upgrade from Blackboard 6.3 to 7.3, a problem occurred in that old courses could not transfer directly into the new version. Recently, the University of North Carolina has developed a piece of software called bFree which allows users of Blackboard 6 to export their old classes to their computers and use the files to create new Blackboard 7 courses without having to redo everything. This document will walk you through the process of converting a course over to the new system. bFree is not perfect. It will not make it so that all you have to do is click a button and everything is magically transferred to Blackboard 7.3. A large amount of work will still need to happen, but using bFree to extract your old course information is much easier than totally rebuilding your course. There are also limitations in what it can export, but UNC is working to upgrade the software eventually to allow it to extract everything. Please keep in mind that the server that houses Blackboard 6.3 will be removed in May 2008. All old courses will be archived. After this date, if you wish to export an old course, you will need to call CIDDE in Oakland. At minimum, please consider exporting your old courses to your own computer even if you are unsure whether you intend to use them. This will be much less of a headache in the end.

Downloading bFree to Your Computer 1. Go to: http://its.unc.edu/tl/tli/bFree/ 2. Click on “Information & Download.”

3. Scroll down the page. If you do not have Java installed on your computer, you will see a link to download and install JRE 5.0. DO NOT click on this link. The link is broken and this is not the latest version of Java. Instead, go to http://www.java.com and click on the “Free Java Download” button. Install Java and then refresh the bFree webpage in your browser. 4. If Java is already installed on your computer (or after you install it), click on “Click here to download bFree.”

5. bFree will download and automatically open. An icon is also installed on your desktop.

Exporting From Blackboard 6.3 1. Log in to the Blackboard 6.3 website (https://blackboard6.pitt.edu/) and open the old course you wish to convert. 2. On the left side of the screen, click on the “Control Panel” link.

3. In the “Course Options” area of the screen, click on “Export Course.”

4. On the “Export Course” page, select all items you wish to export. This will allow bFree to extract them. Make sure you check the box for “Settings,” as this provides basic course information. Click “Submit” button. 5. On the next page, a link to the exported file will appear. Right-click on the link and select “Save Target As…’ Save this file to your computer (preferably to the desktop). This creates a .zip file with the file’s name containing the term and course number.

Opening the Exported Course with bFree 1. After opening bFree, click on the ‘File’ menu at the top. Select ‘Open and archive “zip”…’

2. Select your exported course file and click ‘Open.’

3. After processing the file, a list of course information and documents will appear. Check the boxes for each document or piece of information you wish to extract. If you wish to extract the whole course, click the box next to ‘Course.’

4. From here, you will have two options as to how you wish to extract your information. This depends on how your course is set up. For most people, it would be best to save your course information in both formats.

Option 1: Saving as Files and Folders 1. If you have documents attached (ex. .pdf, .doc, .ppt, .wmv, .mp3, etc.), select ‘Extract as files/folders…’ from the ‘File’ menu.

2. In the window that appears, choose to make a new folder (preferably on your desktop) and save the documents to it.

3. The files will now be extracted and saved to your computer and will be available to load into your new course in Blackboard 7.3. Option 2: Saving as a Website 1. If your information is typed into Blackboard (ex. assignments, required readings, website links, etc.), extract your information as a website. This will save all the information as an .html webpage. From the ‘File’ menu, select ‘Extract as a website…’

2. As done in the first option, in the window that appears, choose to make a new folder (or use the one you already created) to save your information. 3. In order to transfer this information into the appropriate area of your Blackboard 7.3 course, open the .html files and copy and paste everything one page at a time. Unfortunately, this is tedious and slow, but this is still better that completely redoing everything.