E-learn Weblog of Willem van Valkenburg

Many years ago collegeas of mine create a couple of Building blocks for Blackboard version 6.1. Until version 9 these building blocks worked fine with every release. For version 9.1 we had to update theme and we did.

RichURL
This building block is a Content Tool that makes a link to an external system. With the link you can add extra parameters. You can use the some of the default parameters of the Blackboard context: Username, First Name, Last Name, E-mail address, Student-ID,Gender,Course ID.

You can also add some extra static parameters. So you can create a link like this:

http://url.com/?username=[username]&courseid=[course id]&access=true

You can download this building block from Oscelot: http://projects.oscelot.org/gf/project/bb-richurl/

Batch Enroll Users
Traditionally you can only batch add users with their username. At the TU Delft there are still some systems that only have the studentID available. We created a building block that can handle a txt-file with on every line a username or a studentID. It will add all these users as a student to the course. You find the building block in Course Tools.

You can download this building block from Oscelot: http://projects.oscelot.org/gf/project/bb-batchenroll/

Unenroll Tool
The third building block is the unenroll tool. This allows students to unenroll from a course without the interference of an instructor. The tool is default enabled and set to disabled. So no student data is removed. But it is possible to change this to remove, so all user data is removed from the course.
If your institution populate the student enrollments from their student administration system, you probably don't want to install this.
Student can find the tool on the Tools page. Instructor can find it in Course Tools.

You can download this building block from Oscelot: http://projects.oscelot.org/gf/project/bb-unenroll/

We have tested these building blocks with version 9.1SP1, but they should work with version 9.0. Although you have to change the manifest file for this, because it checks the version. 

If you have any question regarding these building blocks, please ask theme via the forum on Oscelot. The building blocks were originally created by Mark Schenk and are now updated for 9.1 by Richard van den Berg.