About enrolling users

The Users page lists all enrolled users in your course and allows you to manage their settings. In many cases, your institution handles course enrollments for registered students and manages their accounts.

If your institution allows it and gives you the appropriate permissions, you can add or delete users as well as change passwords, roles, profile information, and availability in your course.

Access the Users page from the Control Panel in the Users and Groups section.

You can enroll users in three ways. These options are available in the Enroll User menu or the Batch Enroll option.

  • Create a User: Create users and automatically enroll them.
  • Find Users to Enroll: Enroll users who have an existing account in the system.
  • Batch Enroll: Enroll multiple users all at once and assign them a course role.

Create users

Your institution manages the ability of instructors to create new users.

  1. On the Control Panel, expand the Users and Groups section and select Users.
  2. On the Users page, access the Enroll User menu and select Create User.
  3. On the Create User page, provide the required information and any other relevant personal information.
  4. Select a Role and Availability for the user.
  5. Select Submit.

For institutions with multiple information systems, creating users may occur in a different information system accessed by a link at the top of this page.

Information about users is stored in a user profile. Your institution controls which of the fields of data in the user profile appear to users and which are editable by users.

Find users to enroll

  1. On the Control Panel, expand the Users and Groups section and select Users.
  2. On the Users page, access the Enroll User menu and select Find Users to Enroll.
  3. Type a username or select Browse to search for users. Only users that aren't already enrolled in your course will be identified in a search for users.
  4. Select or type as many usernames as needed. Separate multiple usernames with commas.
  5. Select a Role and Enrollment Availability for the users.
  6. Select Submit.

You can also search for users by first name, last name, and email.

Located Users: Search results display up to 25 names on a page. Searches that result in more than 25 users will display users on multiple pages. You can't enroll multiple users who appear on different pages. Instead, select users to enroll from a single page and select Submit. Redo the search to select more users to enroll.

Availability: You can't enroll users who have been made Unavailable by your institution. Users who have been enrolled in your course, but made Unavailable by you, won't see your course on the My Courses tab and don't have access to your course. You need to set the course to Available for these users so that they can see they're enrolled in your course.

Batch enroll users

Batch Enroll Users adds multiple users to your course and assigns them a course role. Users that don't exist in the system will be created in the system and added to your course. User data is defined in a batch file that must be created outside the system. Common creation tools are text editors and Microsoft Excel.

Your institution controls whether you can batch enroll users.

  1. On the Control Panel, expand the Users and Groups section and select Users.
  2. On the Users page, select Batch Enroll Users.
  3. Select Browse to locate the batch file, and select a Delimiter Type, if necessary.
  4. Select Submit.

Format the batch file

The batch file must include only one record per line. Each field needs to be separated by a delimiter and surrounded by quotation marks.

CSV (comma separated value) files created by Microsoft Excel automatically add quotation marks around every field.

Fields must appear in the following order for each user record. Fields marked with an asterisk are required.

Username*, Last Name*, First Name*, Email, Password*, Course Role*, Student ID, Middle Name, Job Title, Department, Company, Street 1, Street 2, City, State / Province, Zip / Postal Code, Country, Work Phone, Home Phone, Work Fax, Mobile Phone, Website, Course Availability, Other Name, Suffix, Title

You can't change a user record using the Batch Enroll process. If the system recognizes the username, the enrollment is processed without changing user data. Once the system recognizes a username, only course role and availability are processed. Other information for the user record is ignored.

You can leave optional fields blank. The Username field is case sensitive. If you leave the Password field blank, the user's password will be the same as their username. A blank Password value needs to be enclosed in quotation marks. For Course Availability, include Y for Yes and N for No. Users are available in a course by default, but you can control this within the course.

About batch files

Batch files are TXT files that can hold large quantities of information to upload to the system. Each batch utility contains specific instructions on creating the batch file. These batch file standards are universal:

  • Each file must be a supported file type, either TXT (plain text) or CSV (comma-separated values).

    Microsoft Excel versions 2003 and later automatically insert double quotes in each field if the worksheet is saved as a CSV file.

  • Each file must be in DOS format. Files in Mac or UNIX format must be converted to DOS.
  • Each field must be enclosed in double quotation marks. For example: "John"
  • If quotation marks appear in a field, use an escape character to indicate that the next character does not mark the end of the field. The escape character is a backslash (\). For example: "\"NICKNAME\""
  • Each field must be separated with one of the following delimiters: comma, colon, or tab. When selecting AUTO, only one type of delimiter may be used in each batch file. For example: "John","Smith" or " "John":"Smith"
  • Each record must be on a separate line. For example:

    "John","Smith"

    "Samantha","Baker"

  • Don't include blank lines between records. The blank line will be processed and return an error.
  • Blackboard recommends that each batch file not exceed 500 records because of timeout restrictions associated with most browsers.

List all users in a course

  1. On the Control Panel, expand the Users and Groups section and select Users.
  2. On the Users page, select Go. All users appear.

    You may download the list in spreadsheet format. To learn more, see Work Offline With Grade Data.

  3. On the Control Panel, expand the Grade Center section and select Full Grade Center.
  4. Point to Work Offline and select Download.
  5. Select the columns that you want to download. The list of students is included automatically.
  6. Select Submit and save the file.

Remove users from a course

When you remove users from your course, the action is permanent and irreversible. All of the information associated with the users, such as Grade Center information, assessment and assignment information, and course statistics are also deleted. Discussion board posts, received messages, and email messages aren't deleted. Deleted users and their corresponding information can't be restored to your course. However, you can re-enroll a deleted user into your course without any associated data.

  1. On the Control Panel, expand the Users and Groups section and select Users.
  2. On the Users page, select the check boxes next to the users you want to remove from your course.
  3. Select Remove Users From Course.
  4. A pop-up window warns you that the action is final. Select OK to delete the user.

Or, you can delete users one at a time:

  1. On the Users page, access a user's menu and select Remove Users From Course.
  2. A pop-up window warns you that the action is final. Select OK to delete the user.

Manage settings for users

These options are accessed in a user's menu:

  • Edit: Update personal information about a user.
  • Change User's Password: Change a password. A user will receive an email notification about the change.
  • Change User's Role in Course: Select the role for a user. This setting only affects the course you're teaching.
  • Change User's Availability in Course: Set a user's availability to Yes or No. This setting only affects the course you're teaching. Availability appears in the right column on the Users page.
  • Remove Users From Course: Select this option to delete users. You'll be prompted to confirm the removal.

Enrollment options

You can customize how students enroll in your course.

  1. Change Edit Mode to ON.
  2. On the Control Panel, expand the Customization section and select Enrollment Options.
  3. Select the appropriate enrollment option.
    • Instructor/System Administrator: This option gives the instructor or the Blackboard administrator at your institution control of the enrollment process. Select the check box to create a link for students to email an enrollment request to the course instructor. This link appears in the course catalog.
    • Self Enrollment: This option allows students to enroll themselves in your course.
      • Use the date fields to set a Start Date, an End Date, or both to control the time frame that students can self-enroll. If you do not select dates, a student may self-enroll at any time, unless you make your course unavailable or the course duration dates have passed.
      • You can use an Access Code to verify the self-enrollment process. An access code is provides a degree of control over who can and cannot self-enroll in your course, but leaves it up to the student to initiate and complete the enrollment process.