How To Cross-Listed Course Shells

Blackboard CE includes a cross-listing feature where content and student activity from two or more course shells can be combined. Once a course is cross-listed, for all practical purposes, the individual course shells are not used and in essence cease to exist for the student and instructor. You should only cross-list courses when you want them to be treated as a single section.

Cautions
Just a few cautions about cross-listing courses:

• You cannot cross-list a course once student activity has occurred in the course shell.
• You cannot un-cross-list a course once it has been cross-listed without serious problems as far as content and student activity.
• You’ll want to add content to a cross-listed course after it is cross-listed. The “parent” course shell (created when two or more courses are cross-listed) is different from any of the “child” course shells that are cross-listed, e.g. it is a “new” course shell, and it will not include content from any of the “child” courses. Note: since the “parent” course shell is new, you can copy content into it from any other existing course shell.

How To Cross-List
Typically, only credit course sections are cross-listed but you can cross-list credit and non-credit courses together. Here’s the process for cross-listing two or more courses.

1. Course shells in Blackboard are based on courses entered in Banner so that’s the first step. An Integration Partner value must exist on the course sections (SSASECT form) in Banner for Blackboard course shells to get created.
2. All course shells to be cross-listed (for non-credit and credit semester in which the cross-listing will occur) need to be created before the cross-listing can occur. This is handled by Information Services using an XML Course and Faculty Assignment Extract from Banner and faculty are alerted when the course shells for a new semester are created using the jccconline.jccc.edu list.
3. If two credit courses are to be cross-listed, no further action is required. If one or more credit and non-credit courses are to be cross-listed together, the instructor of the courses to be cross-listed (or the appropriate administrative assistant for the program area) must email the Help Desk with the complete name (including CRN, course number and title) of each course that is to be cross-listed. Be sure to indicate that this request needs to go to the attention of Jeff Morgan and/or Philip Mein (in Academic Computing Services), not the Ed Tech Center staff.
   
   It is important that it be very clear which courses are to be cross-listed together because if course ABC and DEF and HIJ are listed together, then students in any one of those courses will have access to all course materials in the “parent” course that is created by the cross-listing.
4. Once Academic Computing Services staff cross-list the course, they will notify the instructor.
5. Once notification is received by the instructor, course content may be added to the parent course shell. The instructor’s Ed Tech Center Designer can assist with the process as needed.

What Students and Instructors See
If cross-listing operates as “designed,” students will see only the name of the course in which they are enrolled but upon entering the course, they may see a non-descript title such as “Cross Listed - Group 555 – Cross Listed.” That is what the instructor will see on her My Blackboard screen, e.g. the non-descript title.

Backing Up and Deleting Courses

In case you’re wondering about standard operating procedure regarding when courses are deleted off the JCCC Blackboard CE server:

1. Production “credit” course shells will be removed from the server about 1 month into the next subsequent semester, however, spring courses will not be removed until 1 month into the following fall semester.
2. Each semester the academic director of the Educational Technology Center will alert faculty members about 2 weeks into the semester that courses will be deleted unless they request otherwise, e.g. to accommodate contract incomplete grades, self-paced courses, etc.
3. Self-paced courses (950 sections) are the exception, they’ll stay online for a full year and a month after the start date, and then they’ll be removed.
4. Before any course is removed a backup will be made by Academic Computing Services and stored. If backups are needed in the future, IS will retrieve the backups as needed.
5. As an added precaution, faculty members are encouraged to backup their own courses after the end of each semester or after they make any significant changes to the course (e.g. add an epack, add a new module, make a significant revision, and so on). The backup made by faculty members should not be stored only in the course shell, but should be downloaded to the instructor’s workstation and then copied to media such as a CD or DVD. The instructor’s Ed Tech Center Designer can assist you with this process if needed.
6. “Z - Dev courses” (those used for course development, will not be automatically deleted. Faculty members should periodically review their list of “Z – Dev Courses” (to determine if the development course shell is still needed) and when appropriate, request that the course data be backed up and deleted.

If the instructor needs a refresher on how to create a course Backup, there’s a Flash movie and PDF printout covering the process available at http://web.jccc.edu/edtech/notes/get.asp?DocumentID=177.

Instructors should be aware that the way to download the backup file to your computer is a little circuitous, but not hard.

1. Once the Status of the backup is "Complete", you use the ActionLinks next to the name of the Backup file and choose "Save as File."
2. Unfortunately, the only choices for where to put the file are My Files or Class Files (My Computer is not an option). We recommend choosing My Files.
3. After saving the file (make a note of the filename), go back to the My Blackboard screen and click on the Content Manager tab - this accesses the My Files area.
4. Find the backup (by filename), and use the ActionLinks to choose Download.
5. You can now choose a location on your computer to save the file.

If you need assisance creating a CD or DVD copy of the backup file, please contact your Ed Tech Center Designer.

Have You Decided Not to Use That ePack After All?

If you create your course based on an epack that requires students to enter an access code and you decide to cease using the epack …read on!

If you start with a course based on an epack and strip out all course content that came with an epack (which you must legally do to no longer require students to purchase the access code), the new course will still require the access code. Even if you copy the course to a new course shell after deleting the epack content, the new course shell will still require students to use an access code.

The access code “trigger” is buried in the course shell and cannot be removed by you or the campus Blackboard server admin (that is, we do not have the tools or scripts required to do so, even if we could legally do so).

If you want to cease using an epack that requires an access code, you must start with a fresh course shell and build all content in that course shell.