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Top Hat's advanced Blackboard integration allows educators to sync grading and class roster information between the two systems. The integration is designed to ease student registration and on-boarding, and to allow educators to easily send grades from Top Hat into Blackboard. This integration option is implemented at schools who have institutional relationships with Top Hat.
⚠️Blackboard Ultra NoteBlackboard Ultra does not allow building blocks and therefore users will not be able to configure an Advanced Integration on their Top Hat course.The workaround is to use LTI 1.1 or LTI 1.3 (Note that LTI 1.3 only supports single section courses on Blackboard) |
Authenticating with Blackboard
The first step in syncing your Top Hat course with your Blackboard course is to ensure you have
1) Created a Top Hat account and course(s) (Educator: Creating Your Account and Courses)
2) Published (made public/available) your Blackboard course(s), and
3) You are an instructor in your Blackboard course (it will not work for teaching assistants or administrators).
If you have co-instructors or teaching assistants for this course we strongly encourage you to designate one instructor as the person who will facilitate the authentication and manage the syncing of grades throughout the semester.
From your course page, click on the "Course Settings" icon in the top header.
From the upper menu of options for your selected course, click on "LMS Setup & Sync" and then click on the blue "Enable LMS sync" button.
In the window that appears, click the blue "Authorize Top Hat with your LMS" button to give Top Hat permission to authenticate with your Learning Management System (LMS), in your case Blackboard.
Log in to your Blackboard Learning Management System on the screen provided (note: if you are already logged into Blackboard in the same browser you may not be provided with this screen and will be logged in automatically). In some cases, depending on your school, you may be taken to your school's login page instead. Enter your credentials and log in to continue.
Once your Top Hat account has been successfully authenticated with your Blackboard account you will be provided with a list of the Blackboard courses that you are enrolled as an instructor. If you do not see the intended course in the list, ensure that you are enrolled in the Blackboard course as the instructor and that you have published (made public/available) your course in Blackboard. Select the course and then click the blue Next - Import Students button.
If you are teaching multiple courses using Top Hat you will want to follow the above steps to authenticate each of your Top Hat courses with its corresponding Blackboard course.
Inviting Students to Join your Top Hat Course
When your Blackboard course roster has been imported into Top Hat you will be provided with the following message and clicking the blue Go to Student Manager button will take you to your Top Hat course's Student Manager where you can invite your students to join your Top Hat course!
When your Blackboard course roster has been imported into Top Hat you will be provided with the following message and clicking the blue Go to Student Manager button will take you to your Top Hat course's Student Manager where you can invite your students to join your Top Hat course!
In your course's student manager you will see a list of all of the students who have been added from Blackboard to your Top Hat course. Students with an existing Top Hat account will be automatically enrolled in your Top Hat course and can be identified by "Enrolled" in the Enrollment column.
If a student does not yet have a Top Hat account associated with their email address you will want to invite them to create an account and join your Top Hat course.
To do so, simply click where it says All Students and then select Pending to show only the students who have not yet enrolled in your Top Hat course. Click in the box to the left of the Status header to place a checkmark in it to select all the students on your pending list, and click on Invite Selected. These actions will resend the email invitation to the appropriate students so long as they have not received an email invitation in the past 24 hours, and to a maximum of 10 invitations total.
To do so, simply click where it says All Students and then select Pending to show only the students who have not yet enrolled in your Top Hat course. Click in the box to the left of the Status header to place a checkmark in it to select all the students on your pending list, and click on Invite Selected. These actions will resend the email invitation to the appropriate students so long as they have not received an email invitation in the past 24 hours, and to a maximum of 10 invitations total.
As a best practice, we recommend instructing your students to check their university email address for the invitation and click on the unique link provided to them within the email invitation. This is important as it will help ensure that there are no errors in their account details which in turn ensures that their grade data is successfully transmitted between the two platforms.
As revised rosters become available to you or once the add/drop period is over, simply re-sync your Top Hat course with your Blackboard course by clicking on your name in the upper right hand corner and select Course Settings. From your list of courses under the Course Settings heading, select the course you want to sync with Blackboard. From the upper menu of options for your selected course, click on LMS Setup & Sync and then click on the blue Run LMS sync button.
As revised rosters become available to you or once the add/drop period is over, simply re-sync your Top Hat course with your Blackboard course by clicking on your name in the upper right hand corner and select Course Settings. From your list of courses under the Course Settings heading, select the course you want to sync with Blackboard. From the upper menu of options for your selected course, click on LMS Setup & Sync and then click on the blue Run LMS sync button.
This will pull new student email addresses into your pending students list (or enrolled list if they already have Top Hat accounts!), and you simply need to follow the steps above to invite all of the students on your pending list to your Top Hat course, or select individual students to invite! Have yet another revised roster? Not to worry, this process can be repeated for as many roster revisions as necessary! You may also choose to Sync roster only if you do not wish to import any Top Hat grades into your LMS.
Syncing Grades
Once your Top Hat and Blackboard courses are successfully synced you can easily transfer student grade data from the Top Hat gradebook to your Blackboard grade center. The syncing of the two platforms is a deliberate action and does not occur automatically. Most educators choose to sync regularly to ensure the students' grade in Blackboard is up to date with the inclusion of their Top Hat components.
Once your Top Hat and Blackboard courses are successfully synced you can easily transfer student grade data from the Top Hat gradebook to your Blackboard grade center. The syncing of the two platforms is a deliberate action and does not occur automatically. Most educators choose to sync regularly to ensure the students' grade in Blackboard is up to date with the inclusion of their Top Hat components.
You can initiate the syncing process by either clicking on the LMS Sync button in the upper right hand corner of your course gradebook, or accessing your course settings by clicking on your name in the upper right hand corner and select Course Settings.
From your list of courses under the Course Settings heading, select the course you want to sync with Blackboard. From the upper menu of options for your selected course, click on LMS Setup & Sync and then click on the blue Run LMS sync button.
You can customize your sync by clicking on the blue Edit associated with each option in the Sync Configurations box.
1) Grade Export Options
The first sync configuration option is whether how you want to organize your exported grades.
The first sync configuration option is whether how you want to organize your exported grades.
- Course - All Top Hat content is recorded as one big aggregate grade - All of the content found in Top Hat will be added up and exported into your LMS as a single entry for each student. This is great if you only want Top Hat to account for a set amount of your overall course material.
- All top-level folders - Each top-level folder is recorded as a column - Folders in Top Hat will appear as individual columns and entries in your LMS. Content in your folders will be rounded up to the folder level. This grading structure works well if you organize your content by lecture (eg. "Week 1", "Section 1", "Class 1" etc.). Note: Items contained in subfolders are added to the top-level folder's calculations and every folder will be overwritten every time you sync.
Once synced, accessing your grades in Blackboard will show columns titled with the naming convention TH-[Folder Name] where Folder Name reflects your folder titles in Top Hat.
- Specified top-level folders only - Only folders you choose will be recorded as a column - The folders you select in Top Hat will appear as individual columns & entries in your LMS. Content in your folders will be rounded up to the folder level. This grading structure works well if you would like only specific content to be synced with your LMS.
Once you have identified this option as your choice, click "Save." Upon clicking "Run LMS Sync" you will be provided with a modal in which to select the folders you would like to sync with your Blackboard course and then you will simply want to click the modal's "Run LMS sync." This allows you to select which folders to overwrite with each sync.
Once synced, accessing your grades in Blackboard will show columns titled with the naming convention TH-[Folder Name] where Folder Name reflects your folder titles in Top Hat.
2) Attendance Options
The second option available to you is whether or not you want to include students' attendance scores in your sync with Blackboard. Upon syncing, this will create a column in your Blackboard gradebook with your students' cumulative attendance grades, either as a percentage or points depending on how you align your settings below.
The second option available to you is whether or not you want to include students' attendance scores in your sync with Blackboard. Upon syncing, this will create a column in your Blackboard gradebook with your students' cumulative attendance grades, either as a percentage or points depending on how you align your settings below.
3) Value Options
You can decide whether or not you would like your grades transferred as a percentage or as points.
- Percentage - Grades will be converted into an overall percentage score out of 100% when reported from Top Hat.
- Points - Whatever points you set up in Top Hat will be reported in your LMS.
4) Roster Options
If, upon syncing, you want to remove students from Top Hat that do not match your LMS roster. After clicking "Edit," select "Remove students from my course who disenroll from the LMS" and then click "Save." This will remove students who are no longer enrolled in your LMS course from your Top Hat course.
If, upon syncing, you want to remove students from Top Hat that do not match your LMS roster. After clicking "Edit," select "Remove students from my course who disenroll from the LMS" and then click "Save." This will remove students who are no longer enrolled in your LMS course from your Top Hat course.
Syncing Your Grades
Clicking the blue Run LMS sync button will pass students' grades from your Top Hat course to your Blackboard course. Accessing your Full Results Center in Blackboard will show columns as per your sync configuration choices.
Clicking the blue Run LMS sync button will pass students' grades from your Top Hat course to your Blackboard course. Accessing your Full Results Center in Blackboard will show columns as per your sync configuration choices.
Next time you want to sync your grades, simply return to this page within your course settings and click the blue Run LMS sync button again. You don't need to adjust your sync configuration settings, but you're welcome to change these as you desire throughout the semester.
If you want to disconnect the LMS sync or clear information from either system, you have the ability to do so. Take a look at this article for more information: Educator: Disconnect Learning Management System (LMS).
If you want to disconnect the LMS sync or clear information from either system, you have the ability to do so. Take a look at this article for more information: Educator: Disconnect Learning Management System (LMS).
In order for a student's grades to sync to Blackboard correctly, the email address on their Top Hat account must match the email address they have listed in Blackboard. In cases where a student mistakenly signed up for Top Hat using an incorrect email address, instruct them to go into their Account Settings and update their email address to match the one they have listed in Blackboard.
You can check the email address associated with each student in the Student Manager of your course.
In the event that a student has duplicate Top Hat accounts (e.g. one under their school email address, one under a personal email address) and they have completed course work on both accounts, instruct them to contact support@tophat.com and request that their accounts and grades be merged to the account associated with their school email address. You can see if a student has completed course work on duplicate accounts in your Gradebook.
Tip: To show student emails in the Gradebook, right click on a cell and select "Tool Panel." Check off "Email" in the tool panel on the right side of the screen to add that column to the Gradebook.
Instructions for students on how they can check their email address on Blackboard and update their Top Hat account accordingly can be found at Student: Email Mismatch with Learning Management System (LMS).
Support
Should you require further assistance with Top Hat, our Support Team is here to help! You can contact us directly by way of email (support@tophat.com), the Contact Support button on this page, or calling us at 1-888-663-5491.
Should you require further assistance with Top Hat, our Support Team is here to help! You can contact us directly by way of email (support@tophat.com), the Contact Support button on this page, or calling us at 1-888-663-5491.
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