Most of the courses that instructors requested us to migrate were migrated using a bulk process developed by D2L for their Brightspace product. However, this process had limitations, namely that the course export package from Blackboard could not be larger than 1 GB. Before we tried converting courses, we ran a report from Blackboard to identify courses that might exceed the 1 GB limit. We reviewed the courses to see what content might make the course export too large to be processed and then planned for an alternate migration, if necessary.

What we found was that in all cases, oversized courses had video content that is better stored on our video streaming system, Panopto. In the process of moving those courses, we migrated the video content to Panopto, creating a folder for each migrated course in the instructor’s “My Folder” in Panopto. If an instructor did not have a Panopto account, we created a holding folder until their account is created. Once the video content was identified and moved, we created export files without the videos and used the bulk conversion process to migrate the rest of the course content.

So what needs to be done? For instructors who do not have a Panopto account or those who only accessed Panopto from Blackboard courses, you need to create a Panopto account by logging in using your Brightspace credentials. You can do this two ways. First, log in to Brightspace and click on the link to Panopto videos in the Zoom widget on your course home page. That action will make a connection with the system and generate your account. Alternatively, you can go to https://wentworth-institute.hosted.panopto.com and login with Wentworth Brightspace credentials. Once you have logged in successfully,  contact LIT so we can transfer your videos to the newly created “My Folder”. For instructors who have used Panopto from Brightspace, you should see folders named “XXXX-1234-01 migrated videos” containing videos from one of the courses you requested us to migrate.

All the links in the course site that may have transferred will be broken. We recommend that instructors re-embed the videos in their course. Here are some instructions to help guide that process for Panopto videos. Briefly, you will create a “new file” and using the Panopto tool integrated into Brightspace, you will embed each of your videos in the correct location and grant the correct permissions for your students to view the content. For YouTube Videos, the process is a bit different and you have two options. YouTube Video re-embed after migration from Bb.

In addition to re-embedding the video content, instructors will need to clean up the course of content that is Blackboard specific and should also review content to see if there is content that is no longer needed, outdated, or duplicated, all problems we’ve observed in some courses. In addition, review your course to see how well it meets the shared expectations document developed by representatives of the Academic Instruction subcommittee of the Faculty Senate and Wentworth Student Government. The clean up process is a good time to reevaluate your course to make certain it meets the needs of your students.