[ARCHIVED] Is there a way to copy grades from Blackboard to Canvas

[qnguyen]

Hi,

We are trying to preserve all Grades within Blackboard, is there a way to export and import them into Canvas ?

Thanks

[kona]

 @qnguyen , probably the quickest and easiest way to find out for sure is to check with your CSM. They should know the answer or be able to find out quickly.

[bgibson · Accepted solution]

You can export a Blackboard Grade Center as an Excel spreadsheet from a course.   But can you batch export Grade Centers from multiple courses?  If you just need to reference the grades for each course,  why import into Canvas?  The course import function brings in content,  quizzes,  discussion boards,  but you don't get users or the Grade Center from a Blackboard Archive.

When you use the API to do content migration, a copy of the zipped Archive is saved in the Canvas course and content like pages, files, modules,  dB entries are unpacked to the new site.   You can save users and GC in an Archive.  Still, you would need to restore the Bb Archive to an instance of Blackboard in order to view student interactions and grades.

We've chosen to copy the Blackboard database and pull grades via SQL commands.   I don't know how,  but we will have someone that does.

[mjohnson3]

HI Quan!

I don't think that this is possible to do directly, mainly because in Blackboard (9.1 anyway), the grade center is a bit 'squirrely' as we would say here in Georgia- items are not always tied to assignments and such.  In Canvas, all grade columns that appear naturally (as in, not created from a grade spreadsheet upload) are tied directly to Canvas- one of the things I love coming from a world where blackboard grade center problems were a major issue. Additionally, grades are also tied to specific users, so if the users are not in Canvas and in the course, there would be no rows for the grades to go into.

Now, with that said, if the Canvas class had the same students, you could probably format the downloaded Blackboard grades into the Canvas grade download format, then upload those grades into the Canvas shell, but I imagine that would be a lot of work with not a lot of pay off.

For us, we had 1 class that we really needed to maintain the grade history for (it was our Math placement test) when we moved from Bb Learn 9.1.  Instead of trying to import that massive sheet into our Canvas instance, we simply kept the excel spreadsheet with the historical data and started fresh in Canvas.

I hope this helps!