To create a course or organization, we have several methods: from manual creation to batch creation using an integration or copying an existing course.

Creating courses and organizations manually

To create courses or organizations manually, go to Admin Panel > Courses > Courses or Admin Panel > Organizations > Organizations. Then click on Create Course (Create Organization) and several options will appear:

• New: To create a course from scratch by filling in the details.
• Restore: To restore a backup of a previously archived course.
• Batches: To create courses in batches by uploading a CSV file.
• Combine Enrollments: To create parent/child courses.

Click New and fill in the details about the course to be created. The required fields are the course name and its ID, which must be unique.

Besides these details, you can select its availability, duration, category, institutional hierarchy node, enrollment options, or language. Click Submit to finish.

The next step, if necessary, will be to enroll users in the course or organization.

Creating courses and organizations in batches

What if we need to create, say, 50 courses? We can create courses and organizations in batches using a CSV file with the necessary information, saving clicks and time.

The first step is to create the file (the simplest is to use CSV) with the required data, which are as follows:

• Course ID - required.
• Course Name - required.
• Course Description.
• Button style/color.
• Initial announcement.
• Announcement title.
• Course category.

Therefore, the simplest file we can create will only have two columns, one with the course identifiers and the other with the names of the courses to be created.

course001,Mathematics
course002,Physics
course003,Biology

• Remember that each record (each course to add) will be on a separate line.
• It is also recommended not to exceed 500 records per file.
• Do not add a header row with the column names; the file should only contain rows corresponding to courses.
• We recommend using comma, tab, or colon as field delimiters.

Save the file you created. Then go to Admin Panel > Courses > Courses > Create Course or Admin Panel > Organizations > Organizations > Create Organization and select Batches.

Locate the file locally, and select the type of delimiter used. You can leave it as Automatic if you are unsure. Click Submit to finish.

Creating courses and organizations using an integration

Using Blackboard integration capabilities, we can create and edit courses and organizations. To create or edit courses, the first step is to create a data integration.

This integration will receive creation/edit information from external systems, which must send a file to the appropriate endpoint. In this article, you can see where to locate the endpoints.

These are the minimum data to send for courses, with the option to add multiple columns with other data, which can be seen here: Snapshot Flat file Header description.

• EXTERNAL_COURSE_KEY
• COURSE_ID
• COURSE_NAME
• DATA_SOURCE_KEY: if not specified in the file, it will be specified in the data integration configuration.

Here is an example of the contents of an integration file with the minimum required fields for courses:

EXTERNAL_COURSE_KEY|COURSE_ID|COURSE_NAME
testCourse1|TEST_COURSE_1|Test Course 1
testCourse2|TEST_COURSE_2|Test Course 2
testCourse3|TEST_COURSE_3|Test Course 3

You can associate the courses you create with terms directly when creating or editing them, using the fields EXTERNAL_TERM_KEY and USE_TERM_AVAILABILITY_IND.

You can also upload files directly to the integration if you need to do so manually occasionally.