Manhattan College is in its final stages of migrating from
Blackboard to Moodle. Please complete the download of all materials
that you wish to save and/or transfer to Moodle by June 30, 2012
when Manhattan College's Blackboard Server is turned off. After June
30, you will no longer be able to access any materials on the Blackboard
Server ( ecourses.manhattan.edu ), including anything stored in the
Blackboard Content Collection (e.g., file storage, portfolios and
artifacts, etc.)
Moodle Servers
1) Course sites will now be hosted on an
academic-year instance of Moodle. The creation of course sites, as
well as faculty and student enrollments, will be synced with the Banner
system, similar to how the process had been done with Blackboard.
- Fall 2012 course shells - Academic year 2013: https://lms.manhattan.edu/
Note that student enrollments will be added several weeks prior to the start of the semester.
2) A separate Moodle
server will be available for departmental, sandbox, and other non-course
sites ("community Moodle"). Those sites will be created upon demand.
We will make available cohorts, e.g. site-wide groups, which can then
be manually enrolled into a site; individual Manhattan College users can
be manually enrolled as well. Examples of cohorts include students by
major or program, full-time faculty, adjunct faculty, etc.
- Moodle Community Server: https://mcs.manhattan.
edu
Note that cohorts/groups will be available for manual enrollment shortly after June 30.
3) The AcademicYear 2012 instance of Moodle (Moodle Pilot) can now be accessed via the following link:
Note that this instance of Moodle is an early version of Moodle: 2.1.
Please see the following release notes for Moodle version 2.2 and 2.3 as there are many updates beyond the Moodle 2.1 instance in use for the AcademicYear 2012:
Moodle 2.3 Release Notes: http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Moodle_2.3_release_notes
Moodle 2.2 Release Notes: http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Moodle_2.2_release_notes
Alternative to Moodle Community Server (non-course sites):
Many
groups at Manhattan College have been using Blackboard primarily to
send emails to the site membership, and/or to restrict files/materials
to the site membership. Most site memberships were managed by ITS via
an enrollment process similar to what is used to manage course
enrollments. If this is primarily how you would like to use a
non-course site, you may want to consider using Google Groups and the
new Google Drive (formerly called Docs) instead of or in addition to a
Moodle site. You can share with a group - as well as restrict access to -
"folders/collections" of files/documents. A Google Group can also
serve as a mailing list. And files/documents can now be saved to one's
Google Drive in their native format. More to follow on this feature ...
Moving files from Blackboard to Moodle is a bit of an art, as there is not a good one-size fits all approach. There are several approaches for extracting materials from Blackboard for reuse in Moodle, and Kim Woodruff has been working with faculty and staff over the past year to assist users in setting up sites in Moodle and transferring content from Blackboard to Moodle. Kim has also created a Training Course available in Moodle which contains instructions and best practices.
In summary, you have the following methods at your disposal:
- Archive your Blackboard Course via the Blackboard Course Archive
utility. This will create a record of everything in your course,
including student work. There is a free tool: bFree that will then
allow you to view most - but not all - of the content in the Blackboard
archive file
- Copy Files to Collection is another Blackboard Utility. This
copies documents/files uploaded to Blackboard Content Areas to a folder
in Blackboard Content Collection. A package containing the folders can
then be downloaded. This approach maintains the original folder
structure - and is readily usable with one's Google Drive.
- Manhattan College has a license for Respondus - a tool for
creating and managing tests. Also provides access to publisher test
banks. This a great way to transfer tests from Blackboard to Moodle.
- Downloads of: package of files in the Content Collection (if you
stored files there); portfolios (if used), gradebook and/or assignments, etc
https://drive.google.com/a/manhattan.edu/?tab=mo#folders/0B2JI8N_JmIXSbmVNMHR5UF9FU3c
If you need assistance in making the transition from Blackboard to Moodle, please contact Client Services.