In Blackboard, they were TESTS. In Brightspace, they’re QUIZZES.
Step 1: Review and Clean Up Quizzes
Enter your migrated course and go to Course Tools > Quizzes.
The first step is assess whether what you see is:
- Neat: A clear, familiar list that maybe only needs a few edits
- Needs clean-up: A confusing list with duplicate titles, or unused tests that you might not have discarded in Blackboard
If it’s a short, familiar list, great! You may not need to delete much.
If it’s a long list, with duplicates, or old tests you no longer used, this is a good time to clean it up.
Before you delete things, it’s a good idea to copy your migrated course into one of your empty sandbox courses. This way, you can work in the sandbox to clean out the old, but you’ll always have the migrated space in its original state, if needed.
The goal here is to ultimately move only the Quizzes that you need into your live fall ’23 course.
If you are uncertain about whether there are duplicate Quizzes, click on the Quiz names and review the questions. If you do have duplicate Quizzes, you can delete one of them.
NOTE: A time saver would be to delete the Quiz that is not connected to the Grade Book, if that is an option. Connection to the Grade Book is indicated by a small ribbon icon next to the Quiz title (as shown).
If there is no grade icon, check-mark the box next to the Quiz, and then click the “More Actions” button to delete it.
If there is a grade icon, you’ll also have to delete the item (column) for the Quiz from the Grade Book. (See instructions for that below.)
Step 2: Populate the Question Library
Why? Brightspace recommends that all questions should reside in Question Library where they can be managed and accessed when building Quizzes. The Question Library can be organized with folders, or “Sections” as Brightspace calls them.
If, in Blackboard, you used question Pools, you should see these as folders (“Sections”) in the Question Library. However, if all of your questions existed only within the tests themselves, moving them into the Question Library is the next step.
How to Move Questions into the Question Library
From the Quizzes area, click on the Question Library at the top of the page.
Step A: Create Sections
- Note: A section is a folder for keeping your questions organized. To create a new section, click the New button at the top and select Section.
Enter a descriptive name of the questions that will be in this Section, e.g. “Chapter 1 questions” and Save.
Step B: Import the questions from Quizzes into the Question Library
- Click on the name of the empty section into which you would like to import the questions.
- Click the Import button and choose Browse Existing Questions.
- Select the “source” or the Quiz that you’d like to import the questions from (upper right). The list of questions in that Quiz will appear on the page. Check the box next to the questions you would like to import, or check the box at the top to select all. (Note: If the question has already been imported, it will have a checkmark next to it and Brightspace won’t allow it to be imported again.)
- Click Add.
- Repeat these steps until you have finished copying all your Quiz questions to their respective Question Library Sections.
- Click the “Done Editing Questions” button.
Optional: Import Publisher’s Test Bank
To import questions from a publisher’s test bank you will used the Import/Export/Copy Components function. This can be found in the Course Admin found on the green navigation bar.
Step 3: Delete Unneeded Quizzes
Note: Once you have copied all of the Quiz questions you want to keep into to the Question Library, you can delete Quizzes that you don’t need anymore. (Or, if you would like to start with all fresh Quizzes, delete all of them and build them again using the QL.)
Are you worried about losing something important? This is why we recommend—before doing any of this—to copy your migrated course into a sandbox and clean up the sandbox space, preparing it to be moved into the live course later.
- To remove individual Quizzes, tick the box next to that Quiz (Or if you want to delete all, tick the box at the top of the list.)
- Click on the More Actions button at the top of the screen. From the pull-down menu, select Delete.
Step 4: Clearing the Grade Book of Quiz Columns
This step is only necessary if you’ve deleted Quizzes that might have been associated with the Grade Book. Unlike Blackboard, Brightspace requires you to both intentionally link Quizzes to the Grade Book at the start, and also to manually remove those Grade Book items for Quizzes that you’ve deleted.
In Blackboard’s Grade Center, they were calledCOLUMNS.
In Brightspace, they’re called ITEMS.
To delete items from the Grade Book,
- Go the Grades & Feedback > Grades
- Click “Manage Grades.”
- Click “More Actions” and then Delete.
- Select all the items for the Quizzes you’ve removed from the Quizzes area and click delete.
At this point you can begin Creating New Quizzes.