1) Yes, I think you are right. Everything is a course in moodle. Courses can have different looks, though, called course formats. There is topic (probably most common), weeks (like topics but with dates), and social (which is mostly oriented around discussion). There are some alternate formats, but I think these three are the most common. I think the reason you don't find the "all workspaces are some variety of course" described explicitly is because it is so basic that we all take it for granted. After all, moodle is an LMS, not a CMS. It was never meant to be joomla or drupal, so you won't find the same kinds of functionalities without modification. I can't remember BB as being any different functionally, although the admin areas are arranged differently.

2) The administrative tool block doesn't go on the main moodle page. I think that is because the front page is a "special" case of course and you are not supposed to treat it the same way you treat other courses/workspaces. As I said before, I have found it much more practical to create a special "course" as a workspace for managing uploads and conversions. I run a few hundred each year through that space and it works great! Your admin login allows you access to anything, so just make a course for handling your conversions and use it. You don't have to be an instructor and all that. I think, perhaps, in this one thing you are still more familiar with how BB does course restores than how moodle does them. If I remember correctly, I had a BB administrative area where the archives were stored and I restored from there. The use of the uploads and conversions course DOES represent an intermediate step that you might not have had before. But on the other hand, it works just as well once you get used to the idea of using a course as an archive repository.

3) I encourage you to add to the documentation in the wiki. You are in an excellent position to really zero in on things that a person ought to know in order to streamline this process. I, for example, have long since developed the "expert's blind spot" and take too many things for granted. So I think you can make a real difference in this regard!

atw

Hi Tonia,

the most recent work on standard Blackboard Conversion was done by LSU - more info here:
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Blackboard_migration#Standard_Blackboard

They have a really easy to use Web based site which converts BB exports to Moodle backups - this web based version is based on an earlier version of their exporter - newer code is available but you will need to set this up/run it yourself (see links in the docs for details)

Unfortunately the LSU converter doesn't Support BB9 very well but it should work well with BB8 files

hope that helps!

Greetings, Ellen!

I am not 100% sure I understand your question, but perhaps this is about opening each resource in a new window instead of the frameset?

That setting is in the admin menu under modules, activities, and then look at the settings for resources. Set resource_popup to "yes". Otherwise, your resource is loaded with navigation frame at the top.

I do remember that at one point, I had an enormous problem with BB files because any file that had a space in it had the filename completely garbled when I imported into moodle. This was a very long time ago, and the problem might have been fixed, but I think you might want to check a link or two just to be sure.

Good luck fixing it!

atw

---------------
edit--I see that you posted down below and the problem has NOT been fixed. The space problem is terrible. Can you get the faculty to help fix the links? Or will they be angry that you asked? That could happen, since there is already great stress in changing systems. I feel for you!

can you tell me more

which version of BB and Moodle do you have

thanks

This is a long standing problem. I did remember some posts a while back on this:

Try:
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=48666

Maybe it will help?? I don't know the versions, and it is an older post.

atw

Did you figure out why you were (are?) seeing that error message? I am stuck on that one, too. Is there no end to this BB-to-Moodle nightmare? I installed 1.9 in the hope that these migration issues were solved in 1.9, but they seem to persist. (Running BB Basic 7.3, like you.) Never mind that BB Quizzes do not migrate in any useful way. (We do not have question pools in the courses that must be migrated, just quizzes with questions.) I feel I am being punished for something awful which I did in a previous life.
Alan

Hi Chris,

In reading this forum post, it looks as though the tool is supposed to help bring test questions over from Bb to Moodle. Is that correct? I am able to bring the questions over using the import tab in the question section of Moodle, and like the post mentions you still have to rebuild the quizzes. I'm not sure if the problems I'm having with restoring is what I am supposed to be experiencing, or if I am doing something wrong. The way it stands now, it is very tedious to bring a course from Bb to Moodle, and fix everything. My main concerns are as stated above--exterior hyperlinks don't come over, quizzes need to be rebuilt, and links are broken to any documents they have spaces in their names.

So if an instructor has links to external web pages in the Bb course, all those links have to be recreated in Moodle (only the name of the web site and/or description comes over, not the actual URL either). Is this what I should be experiencing?

Thanks again,
Ellen

Thanks for the suggestion...unfortunately, the forums are nowhere to be found. Strangely, the names of the forums are imported as labels in the course's front page topic blocks, but there is no associated activity or data.

Guess we'll keep trying...

Hello!

Right now I'm sitting on migration from BB 5.7 to Moodle 1.8

i have about 1500 questions from BB which contain pictures. But Moodle I cant find the way how to export bb quizzes with questions containing pictures in them?

BB gives out *.zip archive whic contain resources folder, ismanifest file and *.dat file. Usually *.dat file is enough to import, but what to dot with pictures?

Please help - I will go insane i i'll have to make these questions by myself.