What is a Course Template?
A template is a “storage” course that allows faculty to retain their course materials from one academic year to the next. Students are never loaded to templates and templates are never deleted. Templates are also helpful for new course preps. The Course link for a live course always begins with the year and the semester e.g. 202009 whereas a Template course always begins with the word TEMPLATE.
The Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning HIGHLY recommends faculty using Blackboard, request a template for each live course they teach. After the template is created, unless requested, it will not be removed. Note: A new template is not needed for each semester. You are responsible for managing your template to ensure content is up to date.
Why Would I Need One?
Creating a course in Blackboard takes time and energy. Courses in Blackboard are archived six weeks after the end date in Banner. This means that faculty will no longer have access to the content that was created in that course. One way to save the course content is to request a template. This saves all course content including assessments, learning activities, and other learning materials so that you have a copy of it the next time you teach it. Instead of starting from scratch, you can use the content in the template to start the next semester. Once the template has been copied into your new course, (see copying a template to your course below) you can edit, remove or update any of the learning materials.
NOTE: A course menu template is now available. See Standard Course Menu Template below for more information.
How Do I Get One?
After you have taught a course for the first time you can request a template by contacting the Service Desk. They will need the course code, name, and CRN Example: 202501 COMM10148 5123, along with the request to have a new template created.
NOTE: If you already have a template for the course you will not need to request a new one. You can simply update your template with the new content.