Creating a parent / child relationship between courses in Blackboard is simply a matter of combining the enrollments from 2 or more courses into one central course, which we will call the parent, to simplify course management and content delivery.

This is a valid solution when we have several groups of students, each in a course, but all of them will receive the same materials and share an instructor.

This is an example with 3 courses in Blackboard, where one is a parent course and the other two are child courses

Combining courses manually

To create a parent-child relationship between two courses, we first create the courses and decide which one will be the parent. We can choose one of the courses to be combined as the parent, or create a separate course for this purpose and keep all the courses to be combined (where students are enrolled) as children.

We will find the course that will become the parent under Administrator Panel > Courses > Courses and click Edit in its contextual menu to create the parent-child relationship. This step can be performed through integration.

We will work on creating the content in the parent course as a normal course. Then, we will enroll users in the child courses if they are not already enrolled, each in the corresponding child course. This enrollment can take place before or after creating the parent-child relationship between courses.

Combining courses through SIS integration

To combine courses as parents and children using an integration file, we will add one more column to the course creation file, MASTER_COURSE_KEY, which will contain the EXTERNAL_COURSE_KEY of the parent course with which this course will be associated as a child. 

This would be an example of a file for associating two courses with the same parent:

EXTERNAL_COURSE_KEY|COURSE_ID|COURSE_NAME|MASTER_COURSE_KEY
testCourse1|Course.1.1.SP2013|Test Course 1|MASTER01
testCourse2|Course.2.1.SP2013|Test Course 2|MASTER01

Separating combined courses

Separating courses removes the parent-child relationship from one of the child courses, making it an independent course again that will not contain any materials from the parent course from which it was separated. If the course had materials added previously (before creating the parent-child relationship), they will remain.

To separate a child course from its parent, first go to Administrator Panel > Courses > Courses and locate the child course you want to separate. You will see that child courses have an arrow. Click Separate in the contextual menu for the child course.

On the page that appears, choose whether you want to delete or keep the enrollments in the parent course. Depending on the reason for and timing of the separation, one option may make more sense than the other.

• If the course was added as a child by accident, for example, it makes sense to delete the enrollments.
• If the course has data such as activities or grades that must be kept, choose to keep the enrollments in the parent course.