Faculty & Unclassified Professional Staff Handbook

Faculty & Unclassified Professional Staff Handbook

Chapter 2 -- Academic Affairs

Blackboard Automated Course Creation Policy

Policy

It is the policy of Fort Hays State University that all courses taken for credit will have a Blackboard course shell automatically created and populated with students. This course shell is considered the official course shell for all courses.

Each of the official course shells will be archived after the end of the semester and removed from the Blackboard system two years later by Teaching Innovation and Learning Technologies (TILT).

Process

• After a course has been approved and loaded into the FHSU system, a computer program will automatically create a course shell in Blackboard.
• Summer and Fall course shells will be created at the beginning of April. The Intersession and Spring course shells will be created at the beginning of November.
• The instructor of record will be automatically loaded as the faculty member for the course.
• The structure of each course name is created with the title of the course as it appears in the FHSU system, the department code and number, the section code, and the semester it is offered (EX: 2026F_TILT101_VA_Concepts in Online Teaching).
• The course ID will include the department code and number, followed by the section and semester (EX: ART101_VA_F2026).
• The official course shell will remain "mapped" to the FHSU system. Every time a student is registered or enrolled into the course, the student will automatically be added to the Blackboard shell (there may be up to a delay of 4 hours, in some cases enrollments may take up to 48 hours for the integration from the FHSU system to be processed by Blackboard).
• Dropped students will automatically be made “unavailable”. Instructors may “hide” dropped students in their gradebook, but may not delete them from the official course.
• Student course enrollment is initiated approximately one week before the start of classes. Students will only be allowed to enroll in a course during the add period through the FHSU system.
• Within a week of final grades being submitted through the FHSU system, TILT will make the official course shells unavailable to students.
• The official course shell will remain on the Blackboard system for two years. After two years, TILT will archive the course shells outside of the Blackboard system and Technology Services will remove the course shell from Blackboard. TILT will maintain a library of the official course shells. They may be restored upon request.
• Instructors who want to merge the course sections must submit merge requests to Blackboard Support through RequestCAT by the week prior to classes starting (subject to change).
• Merged courses are not the official course shell. Additional steps are needed for data mapping when using merged courses.
• Enrollment is restricted to the students registered in the courses through the FHSU system. Limited accommodations may be made. Contact department chairs and program directors for specifics.
• Instructors are responsible for opening their courses for students on time.
• If students need continued access to a course (e.g. incompletes), the instructors may manually make the course available to them.
• Instructors are responsible for the accessibility of their course content.
• For more information visit Blackboard Support or contact Blackboard Support at x5275.

Grades must still be submitted through the FHSU system.

Approved by Provost's Council (10-08-09).
Revision approved by Provost's Council (02-08-11).
Revision approved by Provost's Council (06-19-12).
Revision approved by Academic Council (04-21-26).

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