bFree - getting all your course material from blackboard

BlackBoard Question of the Week
From: http://blogs.luc.edu/blackboardqow/tag/course-content/
Thursday, April 16th, 2009

Q. I have a course that is about to be deleted. I want to save my content, but I don’t want to import the documents into a new course - I only want to save the documents so I can access and modify them. Will Blackboard’s Export or Archive do that?

A. The options for Export and Archive that you find in the Control Panel under Course Options are only for producing a .zip file that is intended to be imported back into Blackboard — in fact, if you open the .zip file, you will not be able to import its contents back into Blackboard.

But there is a free download bFree Blackboard Export Extractor from UNC-Chapel Hill that takes a .zip file exported from Blackboard and creates files and folders that can be used outside of Blackboard. The Export Extractor works best for Word, Powerpoint, and PDF documents posted on Blackboard. Other content will be saved as text documents with HTML tags.

To use bFree Blackboard Export Extractor:

First, export your course

1. Go into the control panel of your Blackboard course and select Export Course, under Course Options.

2. Click the Export button in the Export/Archive Manager, and select the course materials you want to export.

3. Click Submit.

You will be notified by email when the .zip file has been created. To get that .zip file, go back to the Export/Archive Manager and you will see the file that Blackboard created. Click on it and then click Save.

Then download the bFree Blackboard Export Extractor

1. Click on the link above, then scroll down to find the link for download
2. Right-click on the link and Save target as… to save on your desktop. Once the application is saved on your desktop, always use it to open bFree.

Extract your files and folders

When bFree starts:

1. Click the File menu and then click Open an archive zip…
2. Browse to the zip file you downloaded from Blackboard and click Open.
3. Review what has been pre-selected in the checkboxes under the heading Extract? and check any additional boxes you want.
4. Click File > Extract as files/folders…
5. Either create a new folder or choose an already-existing folder to hold the content
6. Click Save.

Once the process is complete, you should see the content in the folder you created or selected, with a folder automatically created for each area of your Blackboard course.