Blackboard Original Course View

Summer/Fall 2024 - End of Original Course View

Blackboard Original course view (OCV) was the standard format for courses created between 2003 - 2023 (including Spring '24 courses created in November/December of 2023).

From January-June 2024, all new Blackboard courses and organizations were initially created in the new Ultra course view by default, with some flexibility to convert back to OCV by instructor request.

As of July 2024, all new Blackboard courses/organizations are in Ultra course view. Courses created for the Fall '24 semester and forward must be delivered in Ultra and cannot be converted to OCV format.

Older Blackboard courses/organizations created in OCV format have been archived and are still accessible to instructors for reference and copying of course materials. ITS Online Learning Services offers a range of training and support resources for copying and updating content from archived OCV courses/organizations into Ultra course view. Please email help@syr.edu if you have further questions about the transition from Blackboard original to Ultra.

Archiving of Original View Courses

As of the 2024-25 academic year, all SU instructors will still have full access to the original course shells for all of their older courses in Blackboard, regardless of format. Instructors/TAs can access these old courses for record-keeping and content copying purposes. Student users will no longer have access to archived courses or their contents, and student users cannot be added to archived courses except in exceptional circumstances (such as resolving an incomplete).

Legacy Features and Content

Many features that were available in OCV courses/organizations depend on tool integrations that are no longer maintained by Blackboard. OLS cannot guarantee that these tools, or their associated data, will continue to be accessible in archived OCV courses. We will do our best to assist users in recovering and preserving data from such tools, but faculty and staff are urged to save and backup their OCV course data

Original Course View Answers Pages

OLS will continue to provide support to instructors working in original view courses for the purposes of accessing, copying, and updating old Blackboard content into Ultra format. Answers pages about Blackboard OCV are still available, but have been archived and no longer appear in the page index in the left-side navigation bar or in basic search results. Archived OCV pages can still be accessed through Answers advanced search. Open advanced search, then under [+ More Filters] on the right, check the box for “Show archived content.” Enter your search terms and include “OCV” to search archived Blackboard Answers pages.

Advanced search interface with 'show archived content' enabled and 'OCV' included with search terms

Original Course View Resources on blackboard.com Help Center

Anthology/Blackboard maintains a detailed customer support site for Blackboard original about how to use the tools and features from both the instructor and student perspective. Please note that some legacy tools that may appear in your older OCV Blackboard courses are third-party plugins from other developers, and may not be covered in the help center site.

Original Course View Organizations

All new Blackboard organizations from summer 2024 onward will be created in Ultra view. Organizations are not tied to a particular semester, and OCV organizations will continue to function for existing users during the Ultra transition period. As part of the transition, all OCV Blackboard organizations will eventually be archived, just like courses. Organization leaders will retain access to the archived organization content for reference and copying purposes, but participant access will be disabled. After the conclusion of the Ultra transition period, OCV organizations will need to be updated to Ultra view before full participant access can be restored. Organization leaders will be notified before participants are disabled but are encouraged to request an Ultra Organizations and transition their content as soon as possible.