The first step in manually transferring your Blackboard course content to Moodle is notifying Learning Systems. Please use our online contact form and let us know your name, the subject (e.g. PSYC) and number (e.g. 101) of each course whose content you will be manually transferring to Moodle. If you fail to do so, you will continue to receive emails from Learning Systems; in addition, deans and department chairs will continue to be notified about Blackboard courses whose migration status is unknown.
The following drop down tabs (click on each tab to reveal its contents) walk instructors through the process of downloading documents contained within a Blackboard course to a computer desktop. This process must be completed before uploading files to the Moodle course. It includes good practices and step by step instructions for the transition process.
You can also view a video on how to download documents to your computer. Just click the film image to the right.
1. Set Up Your Computer
To make the document transfer process more efficient, we recommend a few simple things you can do to your computer:
- Install Firefox if it is not already available on your computer. Go to www.mozilla.com to download and install the latest version. This must be done for both Windows and MAC users. This is necessary because when using Moodle Firefox is the preferred browser. Safari is not compatible, and if you use Internet Explorer, you may encounter problems.
- Create a shortcut/Quick Launch icon for Notepad in your Windows/MAC taskbar. You cannot copy and paste information from a Microsoft Word document directly into Moodle (although you will be able to upload them). This is a program you will need frequently for removing 'unseen' formatting of text.
You can follow these same steps to create a Quick Launch icon on your computer for any program you use frequently.
For Windows:
- Go to Start Menu
- Go to ‘All Programs’
- Go to ‘Accessories’
- Right click on Notepad.
- Choose ‘Create Shortcut.’ The new shortcut will appear in that same dropdown
- Unlock the taskbar by right clicking and choosing ‘Lock the Taskbar’ if that item has a check mark to the left. Leave it alone if it does not.
- Follow steps 1–4 once more, and drag the Notepad shortcut (which is at the bottom of the dropdown) to the Taskbar.
- If you are using Vista, you will only need to right click the Notepad Icon in the Accessories menu and choose 'Add to Quick Launch'
For Mac:
- Click on the desktop.
- From the Go menu, select Applications.
- Locate TextEdit and select it.
- From the File menu, select Make Alias.
- Drag the alias file to your desktop.
Creating Zip Files
Be sure you have a zip/file compression utility available. Uploading files to Moodle is quite easy with .zip files. Using a utility like 7-Zip (Windows) will allow you to create a zip archive of numerous files, which you can upload to the Moodle file manager and unzip into an appropriate folder. This is much faster than uploading individually. You may already have a software program installed on your computer. For Mac, use the native zip utility that comes with OS X (Compress).
You can obtain a free copy of 7-Zip: http://www.7-zip.org/download.html
2. Cleaning House
Conversion is like moving from house to house. It provides a great opportunity to sort through all your old stuff, clean it up, organize, and set it up fresh in the clean rooms of the empty house. When we move, we take out plenty of trash, get rid of things we don't want or need, and pare down all that accumulated clutter of life.
Online courses suffer from the same 'cluttering' process that our homes often do, so we need to follow these steps in the conversion process:
- Log into your Blackboard course.
- Under the Build tab, select File Manager.
Make sure you are seeing all the files (PDF, Word, PowerPoint). If you do not, locate the drop down page and select All.- Remove all content which is outdated, duplicated, or is otherwise unnecessary (those documents you do not wish to download to your desktop).
3. Download Documents to Your Computer
1. Select the files you wish to transfer into your Moodle course by clicking the check box beside each individual file (Do not select any quiz or zip files).
If you have a large number of files, or your file size is large, we highly suggest you download your files in small groups to avoid any timing out, which will corrupt your downloaded files and make them unusable.
2. 
With those selected files, select the Zip icon at the bottom of the page.
3. 
A new page will open. You will want to save your files (in compressed format) to My Computer, so select that location by clicking on the icon. You should know in advance where you are downloading this file to on your computer. You will need to find it later.
4. The documents that you selected will now be downloaded to your computer as a zipped file.
We highly suggest that you click on the zipped file folder, and open each document to check that it has downloaded to your computer properly and is not corrupted.
4. Next Step - Get to Know Moodle
Now that you have downloaded your documents from Blackboard that you wish to use in your Moodle course shell, you can now enter the world of UVic Moodle to start building/redesigning your course.
There are several resources to help in this process.
- Review our online support materials that provide step-by-step instructions and videos on using Moodle.
- Request your Moodle course shell (must be done every semester).
- Sign up for a Moodle 101: Fundamentals workshop (and others).
- Review important copyright considerations when using materials for your course (online video).
- Visit our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).
Uploading your files into a Moodle course
Uploading files to Moodle is quite easy with .zip files. Using a utility like 7-Zip (Windows) will allow you to create a zip archive of numerous files, which you can upload to the Moodle file manager and unzip. This is much faster than uploading files individually.
We have created a video that walks you step-by-step through this process.
Remember that you must request your Moodle course shell first (must be done every semester), wait 24 hours for the empty course to be created in Moodle before you can complete this process.
