I need some urgent advice on how to upload course content created using Articulate to Blackboard version 9. Basically the Articulate output is just some html files linking to swf files.

Is it possible for a course instructor to do so? Or only the admins will have the rights to upload html files?

If i understand correctly, in the previous version of Bb, this can be uploaded as zip package which Bb will be able to extract and reference these files correctly. Is this still valid for Bb9?

Kindly advice. Many thanks!

Selina,

Yes the ability to upload zip files is still the same. Bb 9.1 will offer some additional features with uploading files. That is due out the first of next year.

Kevin

Kevin, thanks for your quick reply and info.

I am not quite sure how to do this. Can someone give me a quick pointer on how to upload such html package and also how does a learner launch the base index.html to view the Articulate course?

Been trying to read the Bb documentation on this. Please help. Thanks!

Selina,

I'm not farmiliar with Articulate. However, if what it generates is a .zip file containing an index.html file and all related .swf, image, etc. files, then what you do is:

1) Create a new content item
2) Attach the .zip file to the content item
3) Select "Unpackage this file" as the special action
4) When presented with a list of contents from the .zip file, choose the file that should be treated as the index file. This is where the initial link from the content item will point

Mike

Mike, thanks for the prompt help!

I get the idea but I'm not too sure if i'm doing this correctly.

Here's what I did.

I login as a course admin and uploaded the Articulate zip file to the content collection. This extracts the files and all the files are now displayed under 'My course content'.

I then copied this link:
http://localhost/bbcswebdav/courses/testcourse1/index.html

and created a new task with the link as description.

After that, I login as a normal learner and click on the above link under My task.

What i'm trying to do is for the instructor to upload the Articulate file and for the learner to launch and view the flash content. Am I doing this correctly?

Another thing i noticed is that the learner was not able to view the flash content. The page shows 'page not found' error pointing to the following res://C:WINDOWSsystem32shdoclc.dll/http_404.htm#http://localhost/bbcswebdav/courses/testcourse1/index.html.

However if I login back as course admin launch the index.html from content collection, everything is running correctly.

Sorry for posting so many times. I'm kinda stuck.

Appreciate advice and help on this. Many thanks!

Tamara,

I'm afraid I don't know anything about setting files up in the Blackboard Content System, so I can only give you directions to upload the file to the course itself. But even not knowing anything about the content system, I can tell you that any links that say "http://localhost..." are not going to work for anyone who's not actually sitting at the computer where the files are stored!

Try this:

1) Log into Blackboard and go to the course
2) Switch to "Edit mode" if necessary
3) Go to the area of the course where you want the Articulate materials to be displayed
4) Click the "Create item" button
5) Chose a name for the content item
6) Select the Articulate .zip file where it says "Attach a local file", and choose "Unpackage this file" where it says "Special action", then click "Submit"
7) On the next screen, choose the index.html file from the list of .zip file contents as the "entry point", and select whether you want the material to open in a new window.

This will create a new item in the area of the course that you started from, with a link that points to the index.html file that gives access to all the flash files. The student can then log into the course and click on that link.

Let me know if this does or doesn't work!
Mike

Hi Selina,

When you want the content to be stored in Content system instead of in the course content itself I think you did the right thing. The only problem is that you didn't use the correct link as Mike mentioned also.
After the zip file has been unzipped search in the CS folder for the starting file (probably the start.html or index.html. Click on Modify for that file. On top of the page your will see 3 links:
Location, location URL and the permanent URL.
For the link in the course you should use the 2nd or 3rd link.
The second will work fine as long as you don't rename or move the file, otherwise you should consider using the 3rd link.

Hope this helps.
Henk

Thanks Mike and Henk for your detailed advice!

Sorry for not elaborating in details earlier. I use localhost as an example as I was running the test on my local VM :)

And I managed to follow Mike's instruction and got it uploaded finally :) What a great community!

Thanks again and have a great day ahead!

Does anyone know how to do this with Bb9.1? The ability to change the Special Action is removed. I used to do it all the time in Bb8 and 9.0, but now that we just upgraded to 9.1 I'm stuck...and so are the sys admins...

Yes it stinks that they do not allow you to unpackage files right in the course.  You have to unpackage them in the Content Collection. There are two ways you can do this but I am going to tell you of the way to do it so that you can choose to open in a new page or not.

1) Create a content area

2) Add File

3) Browse  Course Files (This takes you to content collection)

4) Browse into the course folder that you want to store the package in.

5) Create a Folder, name it

6) Make sure you are in the new folder

7) Upload package

8) Browse to the zip folder on your computer

9) Click submit

10) now you can see the unpacked folder.

11) put a check next to index or homepage (whatever you start page is)

12) Click submit

13) Now you can decide what permissions to give. ( If you don't choose Read access to all files in the folder then some of the things on your pages will not be seen by the students.)

14) Choose color

15) Then new window yes/no

That is it. If you don't need to specify whether to open in a new window or not, in step 2 you would choose item instead of file.

Hope that helps.