Bulk Delete Users / Prepare for New Semester

After archiving your Blackboard course and saving the zipped file (should you need the course restored in the future), it's time to remove students from the course and prepare it to be used during a new semester.

Bulk Delete Users/Groups/Statistics
Bulk Delete removes users (students) and materials from a course site in order to prepare it to be used over again for a new semester.  This is a permanent process - be sure that the archive process has been completed first; then follow these five steps for removing users.  

1. Under the Control Panel of your Blackboard course site, click the Packages and Utilities menu item
2. Click on Bulk Delete
   
   
   
3. Check the parts of your Blackboard course you would like to delete - following are the minimum recommendations for course materials to be deleted:
• Users / Groups / Statistics
  
  
  
• You may also wish to delete announcements if you do not plan to use the same announcements for a future semester
• NEVER bulk delete the Grade Center (as this will cause parts of your course to  not function at all)
4. Type the word Delete (with a capital D) in the confirmation textbox
   
   
   
5. Click Submit

Please note: Not all student-submitted materials are removed from the site.  Students' individual entries in discussion boards, blogs, journals, and wikis must still be deleted within those tool areas.


Update Course for New Semester
Once users/groups/statistics have been bulk deleted from the site, instructors should begin to check through all parts of the site to ensure that all content is up-to-date and ready to present during the following semester (prior to requesting a batch enrollment into the course).  The following ten steps were taken from our Beginning A Semester guide for Blackboard instructors:

1. Ensure that all students, statistics, and other information from past semesters has been removed (bulk delete process)
2. Update information within your site – review items such as the syllabus, your contact information and office hours, assignment schedules/course calendars, and class policies
3. Review the Announcements, and delete or update them as necessary; also set dates for announcements to display as necessary (all announcements can be removed within the Bulk Delete process)
4. Remove asssignments and other materials you are not using this semester, or make them unavailable to your students – this includes materials provided by the textbook publisher when you are no longer using the book
5. Review your current assignments – update instructions, attachments, point values, and due dates as needed
6. Review discussion boards, blogs, wikis, and journals – delete entries from previous students, update instructions, check due dates and point values for any graded forums
7. Review manually-created columns within the Grade Center – remove any manually-created columns that are no longer needed, update due dates, add new columns as needed (for any assignments to be submitted in person, rather than via Blackboard)
8. Organize columns within the Grade Center (from the Manage > Column Organization option), and hide/unhide as needed (hiding columns within the Grade Center only hides them from the instructor; students can still see these in their My Grades area); use Hide from Students to hide columns from students
9. Check all links to ensure they are functioning correctly – this is especially important for external links, which could have changed or might have been removed from the Internet since the course was last used
10. Check availability settings for course content, discussion boards, announcements, tests/surveys, and assignments

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View the Ending a Semester guide for a complete overview and step-by-step instructions for the entire end-of-semester process.

For additional assistance with End-of-Semester Blackboard tasks, contact the TLC at tlc@icc.edu or (309) 694-8908, or visit us in room 240A on the East Peoria campus.


Next week our Blackboard Users' Group will meet in the TLC on Wednesday, May 4 at 12noon or Thursday, May 5 at 3pm - participants may attend either session.