There are 20 units or courses in Blackboard that we need to migrate to Moodle. I see that there is export course package option in Blackboard but how do I import that package into Moodle? Is there a step by step guide? Its urgent and critical as we have a tight deadline. Thanks
Moodle 3.6
Importing a blackboard course into Moodle (Very Urgent - pls help)
by MoodleKittyCat . -
Number of replies: 17
In reply to MoodleKittyCat .
Re: Importing a blackboard course into Moodle (Very Urgent - pls help)
by MoodleKittyCat . -
I now have the exported course from blackboard .zip file. Now, what to do next in order for it to be imported into Moodle as a course? Thanks
In reply to MoodleKittyCat .
Re: Importing a blackboard course into Moodle (Very Urgent - pls help)
by Justin Hunt -
I have never done this. And doubt its anything that can easily be done without manual work. (espec. under urgent conditions)
But here is an old forum thread on the topic.
https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=359132
And here is some code that claims to do the job. Last update was 2 years ago.
https://github.com/kraebsli/BlackboardMoodleConverter
Good luck
But here is an old forum thread on the topic.
https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=359132
And here is some code that claims to do the job. Last update was 2 years ago.
https://github.com/kraebsli/BlackboardMoodleConverter
Good luck
In reply to MoodleKittyCat .
Re: Importing a blackboard course into Moodle (Very Urgent - pls help)
by Howard Miller -
I'm cautiously going to answer this by saying that there's no option in Moodle to import Blackboard course zips.
The last time I looked at this (which admittedly was years ago) BB had gone to a great deal of trouble to make it difficult. Now that BB is more closely associated with Moodle it might be worth asking them.
The last time I looked at this (which admittedly was years ago) BB had gone to a great deal of trouble to make it difficult. Now that BB is more closely associated with Moodle it might be worth asking them.
In reply to MoodleKittyCat .
Re: Importing a blackboard course into Moodle (Very Urgent - pls help)
by Rick Jerz -
Justin and Howard have provided good responses, which I agree with. In Justin's post, where he references another discussion, you will see my comment about importing BB question banks, which typically is a very important part of the migration.
Because Moodle is not BB, I suspect that importing Discussions, Quizzes, and Assignments even if somewhat successful, will not be adequate. Additionally, it is important for instructors to learn how to use Moodle, so the recreation of a course in Moodle will be very beneficial. Sure, some instructors will complain. But the learning will pay future dividends, as they should find Moodle much more flexible and powerful.
Give it a try. Open two browsers side by side, one with the old BB course, and one with the new Moodle course. Keep in mind that Moodle has the ability to duplicate resources and activities, so consider creating some "templates" for these, with all appropriate settings.
Because Moodle is not BB, I suspect that importing Discussions, Quizzes, and Assignments even if somewhat successful, will not be adequate. Additionally, it is important for instructors to learn how to use Moodle, so the recreation of a course in Moodle will be very beneficial. Sure, some instructors will complain. But the learning will pay future dividends, as they should find Moodle much more flexible and powerful.
Give it a try. Open two browsers side by side, one with the old BB course, and one with the new Moodle course. Keep in mind that Moodle has the ability to duplicate resources and activities, so consider creating some "templates" for these, with all appropriate settings.
In reply to MoodleKittyCat .
Re: Importing a blackboard course into Moodle (Very Urgent - pls help)
by MoodleKittyCat . -
Thanks all. Someone gave me this link but the links in there don't load: http://library.csu.edu/elearning/documents/BbToMoodleConversion.pdf
In reply to MoodleKittyCat .
Re: Importing a blackboard course into Moodle (Very Urgent - pls help)
by Mary Cooch -
The dates on that Bb to Moodle conversion PDF are from 2010 - that is ancient in Moodle terms and it is highly likely the process won't work now.
In reply to Mary Cooch
Re: Importing a blackboard course into Moodle (Very Urgent - pls help)
by ben reynolds -
I'm following Mary (which I haven't done in quite a while) to say that everybody else is correct: importing is not easy, and BB made it harder.
Here's some good news. In 2010 when we moved from WebCT to Moodle (1.8), my lead converter said it would take 6 weeks to 3 months to manually move from WebCT to Moodle. My college-student son did it as copy and paste in just less than a day. Note the course had no quizzes.
For quizzes, it might be easier to see if BB has an export in some format that Moodle has an import (XML or whatever).
The whole point of proprietary systems like BB (and e-college, if it still exists) is to get you in easily and make exiting like walking over hot coals barefoot and uphill.
Here's some good news. In 2010 when we moved from WebCT to Moodle (1.8), my lead converter said it would take 6 weeks to 3 months to manually move from WebCT to Moodle. My college-student son did it as copy and paste in just less than a day. Note the course had no quizzes.
For quizzes, it might be easier to see if BB has an export in some format that Moodle has an import (XML or whatever).
The whole point of proprietary systems like BB (and e-college, if it still exists) is to get you in easily and make exiting like walking over hot coals barefoot and uphill.
In reply to ben reynolds
Re: Importing a blackboard course into Moodle (Very Urgent - pls help)
by Rick Jerz -
Ben, Moodle can import BB question "Pools." It is one of the supported Import File Formats.
I no longer have access to BB9, so I can't remember if one does an "export" or "save as" in BB9, and whether there are any options, but I had been doing this a lot in the past.
At the beginning of this year, BB removed its BB9 product from its free "CourseSites" website, and now I only have the BB Ultra product. I have not experimented with BB Ultra to know if Ultra can import BB9 question pools. You would think so, but this is BB.
Just in case your son wants to take a trip back in history, Moodle also supports import from WebCT.
I do agree that it doesn't take long to convert courses from ABC to Moodle. The only difficulty is that these products implement activities in different ways. A BB forum is not the same as a Moodle forum, for example.
Okay, let's get back to your son. So your school was willing to pay a trained IT person up to six months salary, but your son did it in a day. I would say that he should be paid at least 3 months salary, which is around $50,000 US. Right? Oh, maybe only $5,000 for his time, but $45,000 for his knowledge! 
In reply to Rick Jerz
Re: Importing a blackboard course into Moodle (Very Urgent - pls help)
by ben reynolds -
Going off topic with Rick. We tried the WebCT import and the course came in as a camel -- how many humps, where? It has legs? Much easier to copy and paste.
As a college-student gofer, my son got not his college tuition, not a ritzy steak and potatoes dinner, but a pittance and his dad's thanks. But, Rick, you are correct. He should have had a pretty penny.
As a college-student gofer, my son got not his college tuition, not a ritzy steak and potatoes dinner, but a pittance and his dad's thanks. But, Rick, you are correct. He should have had a pretty penny.
Not totally off topic. Good to know BB questions can be imported.
In reply to ben reynolds
Re: Importing a blackboard course into Moodle (Very Urgent - pls help)
by MoodleKittyCat . -
What do you mean by copy and paste? You mean manually doing the content migration? For 20 huge courses, its a never ending task of manual work.
In reply to MoodleKittyCat .
Re: Importing a blackboard course into Moodle (Very Urgent - pls help)
by Howard Miller -
Sometimes it's just easier to accept this and get on with it. Even if you could transfer some or all of the data it's still not going to be in the right format. BB and Moodle have a very different "view of the world"
In reply to Howard Miller
Re: Importing a blackboard course into Moodle (Very Urgent - pls help)
by Lewis Carr -
I agree with Howard, rebuilding is the better solution. I did this some 9 years ago now whilst working in a college. We migrated a modest Blackboard installation into Moodle, it was over 50 courses. What we found was that most of the courses were resource heavy (I.e documents) so we were able to drag and drop these into new Moodle courses. For everything else we just copied and pasted. It took a couple of weeks with just 2 of us working on it alongside the day job.
Moodle courses and Blackboard courses are complete opposites in terms of look, feel, layout and to be honest, your courses will be all the better for it. Even if there was a magic bullet to pull everything in from Bb, you would probably spend longer refactoring everything and making it look right. Plus you get to prune the course and drop outdated content. I hope this helps.
Moodle courses and Blackboard courses are complete opposites in terms of look, feel, layout and to be honest, your courses will be all the better for it. Even if there was a magic bullet to pull everything in from Bb, you would probably spend longer refactoring everything and making it look right. Plus you get to prune the course and drop outdated content. I hope this helps.
In reply to MoodleKittyCat .
Re: Importing a blackboard course into Moodle (Very Urgent - pls help)
by Rick Jerz -
Just out of curiosity, what is in one of these Blackboard course? Can you give us a screenshot of something that you think takes a long time? I am not saying that your courses aren't big, but I just want to get a sense of what you have. For example, does a course have 100 quizzes in it? 80 Discussion forums? 75 Assignments? And are the 20 courses completely different from each other, and delivered completely differently?
Along with a screenshot, might you be able to go to one of your BB courses, and do a Save (meaning simply save the webpage) and then upload it. We might be able to then try a copy/paste from the saved html file, which we can't do with a screenshot.
Ben, I haven't tried importing a WebCT course, nor a BB course. But my guess is that it won't work well. I was talking about question pools. I have dealt a lot with BB question pools because many textbooks that I use seem to always support a BB format. I have not worked with importing WebCT question banks.
In reply to Rick Jerz
Re: Importing a blackboard course into Moodle (Very Urgent - pls help)
by Virasat Solutions -
Hi ,
I will appreciate if anybody can assist us on the below problem.
We are having Blackboard LMS having 30,000 courses and around 20000 users on it. now we want to migrate this all data on the moodle the latest version.
So please guide us on how we can do this? Is there any tool or script to migrate all this stuff to the moodle from the blackboard?
Will appreciate your valuable comments and feedback here.
Thanks,
In reply to Virasat Solutions
Re: Importing a blackboard course into Moodle (Very Urgent - pls help)
by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Somebody solved it recently in the General developer forum: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=392994#p1585283. Hope he'll post his method soon.
In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera
Re: Importing a blackboard course into Moodle (Very Urgent - pls help)
by Russell Waldron -
Thanks for pointing to that, Visvanath.
If it works, it's an important step forward. Is the difference between current Moodle (3.8) and the solution target (Moodle 2.7 - out of support since May 2017) likely to be significant?
If it works, it's an important step forward. Is the difference between current Moodle (3.8) and the solution target (Moodle 2.7 - out of support since May 2017) likely to be significant?
In reply to Virasat Solutions
Re: Importing a blackboard course into Moodle (Very Urgent - pls help)
Hi there,
I'm looking at a similar situation in the next few months. Did you work it out? Can you share your experience?
Thanks,
I'm looking at a similar situation in the next few months. Did you work it out? Can you share your experience?
Thanks,