Extended Course Management v2 (ECM) allows users to perform select administrative tasks in Blackboard courses. The Extended Course Management Tool can be used to give instructors and other non-administrative users the ability to merge and separate courses. These permissions could, for example, be given to an instructional designer role for a department or to instructors for their own courses.

View the Extended Course Management Tool

  1. Sign in to Blackboard.
  2. Select Tools.
  3. Select Extended Course Management v2.
The Extended Course Management v2 option

You will see a list of courses. If courses have been merged, there will be an inverted caret in the Child View column that you can click to expand. The course will also say "Parent" in the Cross List Type column.

A parent course in the ECM list

If you click on the inverted caret next to the parent course, a list of child courses will appear. They will be indicated by a red indent icon as well as the term "Child" in the Cross List Type column.

View of child courses in ECM

Merge courses

You will have two options for merging courses. The first is Merge New. In this case, courses are combined into a completely new parent course. All the chosen courses become children of the newly created parent course. The second option is Merge Existing. In this scenario, an existing course is chosen as the parent course, and the other courses become children of that existing course. In both cases, the courses continue to exist as their own entities, and students will see the same course in Blackboard that they see in the Student Information System (SIS). However, the instructor will only have to manage and update content in the parent course.