Banner and Blackboard

Blackboard and CRN changes

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What happens to your Blackboard course when its course reference number is changed?

What is a CRN?

You may know your course by its module code e.g.

ARTD2003

EDUC6349

GEOG3031 and so on.

However in the University Student Record System “Banner” an additional Course Reference Number (CRN) is used. CRNs are used to differentiate the same module which has more than one delivery in an academic year. For example one module may be taught to separate cohorts in semester 1 and semester 2. Whilst the module code is the same, each delivery will have its own CRN.

How does Blackboard use CRNs?

For every module and CRN in Banner there is a corresponding Blackboard course. This helps instructors who have a module being delivered twice in the same academic year (such as in the above example) to keep their cohorts and their assignments separate.

You can see how the course code and course name are populated by looking at our naming conventions.

https://elearn.southampton.ac.uk/blackboard/bb_naming

 

What happens to my Blackboard course if the CRN of my module is changed?

 

When a CRN is changed the following consequences will occur:

 

  • A new Blackboard course will be created linked to the new CRN.  As with all new courses it will be empty and unavailable to students.
  • Any instructor, teaching assistant, or student who had been added to the original course will lose their access to it.
  • Any instructor, teaching assistant, or student who is set to be authorised to access the new CRN in Banner will be populated onto the new Blackboard course for that CRN.

The outcome of this is that:

 

  • It will appear to students that their course has been made unavailable. It is not reasonable to expect students to see that the CRN has changed.  They will not be able to access their learning resources, submit assignments, or otherwise interact with the module’s Blackboard presence.
  • It will appear to instructors and teaching assistants that their course has been wiped, all content lost, and been set to be unavailable.  It is reasonable to expect that teaching staff will have been informed of the change by their Faculty and so will spot that the CRN has changed.
  • All material and student data remains on the original course.

 

To prevent any unnecessary confusion and stress we recommend that:

 

  1. Before changing CRNs of modules that are currently running, the faculty should make contact with the Blackboard administrators in iSolutions via ServiceLine.
  2. The faculty should tell all staff involved with teaching the course of what is about to happen to their course.
  3. A mitigation plan should be determined between the Blackboard administrators, course instructors, and faculty office. This can then be planned for implementation once the CRN change has been made in Banner in order to prevent students and staff suffering any outage in their online course activities.

Course Naming Conventions for Blackboard

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Regular Banner courses

Course Title

The Course title should display the year (14-15, 15-16, 16-17 etc), the Course Title (long name direct from Banner) and the Course Reference Number (CRN) eg:

YEAR-COURSE_LONG_TITLE-CRN

e.g.

16-17-Management Accounting 3_15204

The rational for putting the year first is so that course tutors may differentiate between old and new courses.

Course ID

The course ID should take the subject code, course number, crn and year.

Eg.

SUBJECTCODE-COURSENUMBER-CRN-YEAR

e.g.

MANG3006-15204-16-17

Non-standard “Arbitrary” Courses

These are courses that fall outside the Banner system, for example specialist courses, sub modular courses, project courses etc.

Course Title

YEAR-COURSETITLE

E.g

16-17-Sustainable Waste Management

Course ID

CourseID-Year

E.g

CE-Waste-16-17

Accessing your courses on Blackboard

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You can check on which courses you are an instructor by viewing the My Courses box when you log into Blackboard.

Example My Courses box
Example My Courses box

 

The My Courses box shows your Blackboard courses with details of the module code. The academic year for which the course applies is at the beginning of the course title.

Courses are set to be unavailable at creation. This means that the courses are unavailable to users until you make the course available.

What “Banner” courses are automatically set up on Blackboard?

Each course module held in Banner has a Blackboard equivalent. Only course modules with a subject code and course number are created, e.g. SPRT1003, MANG2005, SOES6039. Any instructor who is listed in Banner as an instructor for the module will automatically be made a Blackboard instructor for the equivalent Blackboard course.

 

Programmes are not created, only modules. “Arbitrary Courses” may be set up to support other uses of Blackboard. To find out more check the “Arbitrary Course” Application Form.

Automatic enrolment of students onto Banner courses

Students are registered automatically onto Banner courses. Where registration information is available in Banner for a course, it will be carried over once every 24 hours into Blackboard, on week days enrolment information is updated three times a day.

If a student is dropped from a module in Banner their record will be disabled within the Blackboard course, but they will not be deleted from that Blackboard course. This means that although they cannot access the Blackboard course, any discussion board postings, Gradebook entries and other student-related data will be maintained. This may be useful for QA purposes.

So called “Arbitrary” Courses should use self-enrolment.

Automatic assignment of staff onto Banner courses

In order to know which courses staff should have access to Blackboard takes its instructor information from the Banner student record system.  Any member of staff listed as an instructor for a course in Banner will automatically be made an instructor on the Blackboard version of the course.  This information is provided by faculties themselves.

A form is available to request changes to staff listed against courses in Banner, which will then affect Blackboard.

Please complete the Request Staff Access to Modules in Student Systems form.

Adding Colleagues or Students to your course manually

Only if the above methods are unsuitable should staff or students be added manually to a course. Check our Blackboard user management pages for guidance.

When do updates happen?

Blackboard receive updates from Banner each day.

Data sent to Blackboard from Banner  Data processed within Blackboard
Morning From 04:00 each day By 07:00 each day
Lunch time update of changes since the morning

(Instructors, student enrolments, sections)

 From 11:30 (week days only) From 12:15 (usually completed by 12:21) (week days only)
Teatime update of changes since lunchtime

(Instructors, student enrolments, sections)

 From 16:30 (week days only) From 17:15 (usually completed by 17:21) (week days only)

So if an instructor is added to a module at 11:00 on a week day they will see the module on Blackboard by 12:21 the same day.  If an instructor is added to a module at 11:40 they will see the module in Blackboard from 17:21 on the same day.

Note: Removal of students from modules in Blackboard

Students enrolments are only removed from Blackboard on Sunday mornings.  This is because in Banner the “CompReg” process means that when certain details of a student’s enrolment record are changed they may be removed from modules and then added to new modules that following day.  These changes are sometimes made as a result of a mistake.  Depending on when the changes are made it is possible that students could experience a loss of access to a module for several days.  In an attempt to alleviate these issues, when students are dropped from a module in Banner this will only take place on Sundays, to give any automated processes or mistake rectifications to take place during the week.

Course Titles

Course titles are also taken from Banner, if you find an error in the title of your Blackboard course please ask your faculty administrator to correct the course title in Banner. Any changes will be reflected in Blackboard the following day.

Making your Banner Course Available to Students

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When a course is created it is unavailable to students. This allows the instructor to make the course available to students only when the course is ready. You can tell at a glance if your course is available to students, in the My Courses box if a course is not available to students the word unavailable will appear next to it.

All course modules in Banner now have a Blackboard equivalent. When you are ready to make the course available to students it is necessary to simply change the Course Availability setting. Banner modules in Blackboard automatically enrol any student listed in the Banner system as enrolled on the module onto the Blackboard version. It is still possible to add students manually to the course.

There are two ways to make your “Banner” course available to students.  All achieve the same outcome, using different methods.

 

Click Here to find out how to make the course available from the Control Panel
Click Here to find out how to use the Course Availability toggle icon