Support for Retired Blackboard Integrations

Why are some integrations retiring?

As part of a multi-year initiative, Blackboard is aligning with industry standards, to produce more advanced, efficient, and secure tools and integrations. With that in mind, as of January 1, 2024, Blackboard will wind down support for third-party Building Blocks (B2s) in Blackboard Learn and move to integrations based on REST APIs, 1EdTech LTI standards, and Partner Cloud.

How will this affect faculty and students?

Over the past two years, the Learning Platforms team has dedicated resources to transition to newer integration standards. This has been achieved with minimal downtime or service interruptions, ensuring a smooth experience for faculty, staff, and students.

However, due to the limited support of some integrations, changes to courses will be necessary for some and will take into effect on January 1, 2024. Faculty are encouraged to review their Spring 2024 course sections and make changes to the new courses using the recommended alternative solutions. Students will likely experience broken links, or access issues from January 1, 2024 onwards if alternative solutions are not used.

How do faculty make changes to their courses?

To assist faculty in this transition, an overview of the affected third-party integrations, and recommendations are shared below.

• Charon Link Builder

  

  

  About: Charon Link Builder allows instructors to link to course items within a description (e.g., for an item, folder, assessment).

  Impact: The names of the links will remain the same, but the links will break and will become inaccessible. New courses will need to leverage a different tool.

  Recommendations: Instructors are recommended to update their courses as soon as possible. Blackboard has existing tools to help create course links. Instructors can create course links or use the content collection to link to existing files in your course. 

• SoftChalk - Publish with ScoreCenter, Synchronize Copied Content

  

  

  About: The SoftChalk integration allows instructors to upload SoftChalk Create (Desktop) content, and collect student scores in the Blackboard Grade Center. The Synchronize Copied Content tool allows instructors to resolve links to lessons that are copied across Blackboard courses.

  Impact: The names of the links will remain the same, but the links will break and will become inaccessible. New courses will need to leverage a different tool.

  Recommendations: Instructors are recommended to update their courses as soon as possible. As SoftChalk does not have a migration tool available, there is some review and manual workflow to prepare content to use in Blackboard Learn. We would advise instructors to review and confirm if you require SoftChalk content.

  • Download Content: Faculty can download the SoftChalk content from Blackboard: In the Tools > Content Collection, go to the folder that contains the files or folders you want to download. Select the files and folders to download. Select the Download Package button. You can also find the Download Package option in the item's menu. A window may appear asking you if you want to open the file or save it. Select Save File and select OK.
  • Temporarily Migrate to SoftChalk Cloud (Optional): SoftChalk has prepared a workflow to support instructors to migrate their content to SoftChalk Cloud: Migration to SoftChalk Cloud Guide. However, we strongly recommend reviewing the latest notice about SoftChalk Cloud. View the full support site here.

• iClicker Classic Plugin (iClicker Classic Remote Registration, Instructor Tools)

  

  

  About: The iClicker Blackboard Learn plug-in allows instructors to create a link for students to register their iClicker remotes directly within Blackboard. Instructors can download the class roster and student registrations from Blackboard and upload iClicker scores into Blackboard’s Grade Center.

  Impact: Grades will remain, and are archived per the standard procedure. New courses will need to leverage iClicker's new functionality.

  iClicker Classic is moving to iClicker Cloud in January 2024, and there are some major workflows beyond the integration. To learn more about migration and its impact on course instructors and students, please access their migration support page.

  Recommendations: Instructors will need to follow a different workflow for supporting the syncing of grades, and students registering remotes. Instructors can sync grades by following this guide (Roster & Grade Sync) and students can register a remote through their account (Register a Remote).

• iSpring Learning Module Plugin

  

  About: iSpring Learning Module Plugin is a custom integration that allowed instructors to upload iSpring content, and collect student scores in the Blackboard Grade Center.

  Impact: The names of the links will remain the same, but the links will break and will become inaccessible. New courses will need to leverage a different tool.

  Recommendations: Instructors are recommended to update their courses as soon as possible. iSpring can publish and export authored content into SCORM packages. Once a SCORM package has been created from iSpring instructors can follow the guidance to add SCORM Packages in Ultra or Original Course View courses. Access the iSpring knowledge base to learn how to export content, based on your product.

• Top Hat Gradebook Sync

  

  About: Top Hat Gradebook Sync allows instructors to sync their Top Hat gradebook with the Blackboard Grade Center.

  Impact: Grades will remain, and are archived per the standard procedure. New courses will need to leverage an updated TopHat tool.

  Recommendations: Instructors who use the third-party Top Hat will be able to leverage the newly updated integration, Top Hat (LTI 1.3).

  There are two links available in Blackboard. 1) Top Hat Course Launch - which allows instructors to create a course link and directly launch TopHat and 2) Top Hat Deep Linking which allows instructors build content in Blackboard that contains links to content in Top Hat. This integration supports the syncing between the Top Hat Gradebook and Blackboard Grade Center. Review the support guide and instructor here.