The moment has arrived. You've set up the content and quizzing in your Blended Teaching textbook, and you're ready to bring it into Blackboard.
How you install it depends on what your institution has set up, so this guide starts by telling you which route is yours, then walks you through it, whether your course uses Blackboard Ultra or Blackboard Classic.
It covers:
Which Setup You'll Use
Integrated Setup: Installing with the Blended Teaching App
Non-Integrated Setup: Installing with a Course Package
Organize and Publish Your Content
Other Setup Steps
1. Which Setup You'll Use
Your textbook installs into Blackboard one of two ways, and which one you use depends on your institution.
Integrated setup, if your institution has added the Blended Teaching app to Blackboard. You bond your Blackboard course to your textbook and add your chapters, quizzes, and assignments straight into the course.
Non-integrated setup, if it has not. You export your course from Blended Teaching as a course package and import it into Blackboard.
Check whether the Blended Teaching app is in your course. Open the Content Market in Blackboard Ultra, or the Build Content menu in Blackboard Classic, and look for Blended Teaching (iFrame).
It's there. Your institution has the app, and there is nothing to install at the course level. Go to section 2.
It isn't. Install your textbook from a course package instead, in section 3. That route is open to you today and gives you your whole textbook.
Adding the app is an institutional setup between your LMS administrator and our team, and it takes at least six weeks, so it is not a quicker way to get this term's course installed. If your institution would like it in place for a future term, your LMS administrator can start with Adding Blended Teaching to Blackboard.
2. Integrated Setup: Installing with the Blended Teaching App
Your textbook installs through the Blended Teaching (iFrame) tool, using Deep Linking. There are two parts: you bond your Blackboard course to your Blended Teaching textbook, then add your chapters, quizzes, and assignments straight into the course. The same flow works any time you want to add more content later, so installing and adding content are one and the same.
All types of content (video, assignments, quizzes, and so on) are added in the same way. Follow the steps for the course view you use.
2.1. Blackboard Ultra
Step 1: Open Your Course and Access the Course Content Panel
Log into Blackboard and find the course where you want your textbook.
Click on the + Add Content button at the bottom of your Course Content.
Step 2: Launch Blended Teaching from the Content Market
Choose Content Market and then select Blended Teaching (iFrame) from the list of available tools.
Step 3: Select Your Blended Course
If this is your first time using Deep Linking, you'll be prompted to choose a Blended Course to connect to your Blackboard course. All modules, quizzes, and materials will be pulled from the course you select.
After choosing the course, save your selection. This completes the link between your Blended Course and your Blackboard course. Once saved, you can return to Blackboard.
Note, this step is permanent. It bonds your Blended Teaching textbook to this Blackboard Course. Like swans, they stay together forever. So just make sure you choose the right swan. I mean, textbook.
🦢 One textbook, one Blackboard course. The bond is exclusive as well as permanent: this textbook can never also be bonded to a second Blackboard course. So if your other sections have their own Blackboard courses, each of those sections needs its own textbook. (Sections combined into this one course are fine as they are.) Textbooks already bonded elsewhere won't appear in the list to choose from.
Step 4: Select Modules and Add Them
With your Blended Course linked, click the + Add Content button again. You'll be redirected to the Blended Teaching content page.
Select the content you'd like to add, which for a full install is every chapter, quiz, and assignment in your course, and then press the purple Add x Chapters button.
Step 5: Review your Added Content
Your selected content will then appear in Blackboard!
2.2. Blackboard Classic
Step 1: Open your Course and Navigate to the Content Area
Log into Blackboard and find the course where you want your textbook.
From the left-hand menu, click Content to open the main area where Blended Teaching content will be placed.
Step 2: Launch Blended Teaching from Build Content Menu
Select the Build Content menu and choose Blended Teaching (iFrame).
Step 3: Select Your Blended Course
If this is your first time using Deep Linking, you'll be prompted to choose a Blended Course to connect to your Blackboard course. All modules, quizzes, and materials will be pulled from the course you select.
After choosing the course, save your selection. This completes the link between your Blended Course and your Blackboard course. Once saved, you can return to Blackboard.
Note, this step is permanent. It bonds your Blended Teaching textbook to this Blackboard Course. Like swans, they stay together forever. So just make sure you choose the right swan. I mean, textbook.
🦢 One textbook, one Blackboard course. The bond is exclusive as well as permanent: this textbook can never also be bonded to a second Blackboard course. So if your other sections have their own Blackboard courses, each of those sections needs its own textbook. (Sections combined into this one course are fine as they are.) Textbooks already bonded elsewhere won't appear in the list to choose from.
Step 4: Choose and Add your Modules
With your Blended Course linked, click the + Add Content button again. You'll be redirected to the Blended Teaching content page.
Select the content you'd like to add, which for a full install is every chapter, quiz, and assignment in your course, and then press the purple Add x Chapters button.
Step 5: Review your Added Content
Your selected content will then appear in Blackboard!
3. Non-Integrated Setup: Installing with a Course Package
If the Blended Teaching (iFrame) tool is not in your Build Content menu or Content Market, install your textbook with a course package instead. Blended Teaching exports your course as a Blackboard course package, and Blackboard brings the whole thing in as one import: your modules, your chapters, and a gradebook column for every graded assessment, all pointing at your live textbook.
3.1. How This Install Works
Your textbook exports as a Blackboard course package, and importing it builds your course:
Your modules become folders, carrying their real names.
Your chapters, module overviews, and practice quizzes arrive as links that open Blended Teaching in a new tab.
Your graded quizzes, exams, and assignments arrive as Blackboard assignments, each with a gradebook column named exactly as it is in Blended Teaching, its real point value, and its dates.
Your Educator Resources folder arrives hidden from students, as it is in Blended Teaching.
Only published content is included.
Your content and your course structure work differently:
Your content is always live. Every link opens the current version of your textbook, so if you edit something inside a chapter or a quiz, your students see the update right away. There is nothing to redo in Blackboard.
Your course structure is a copy, taken when you exported. The list of items, their names, their points, and their dates are your course as it stood at that moment. Blended Teaching stays the system of record: it is where assessments run, where dates are enforced, and where grades live.
There's one thing to know up front. Grades are recorded in Blended Teaching, where your students take their assessments and see their scores. You fill in your Blackboard gradebook yourself, into columns the install has already built, whenever you want to: after each major assessment, or once at the end of term. Section 3.8 covers how.
3.2. Set Your Points and Dates in Blended Teaching First
The export takes your course as it stands at that moment, so your points and dates come across only if they are already set. Set them now and they arrive with your course. Set them later and you enter them twice, once in Blended Teaching and once on each Blackboard item.
Three things to set:
Set the points each graded quiz, exam, and assignment is worth. Those points become each Blackboard column's maximum, and they add up to your course total.
Set each assessment's start, due, and end dates in your Control Center, on each quiz's Details page in the Assessments tab. Your start date becomes the Blackboard item's release condition, and your due date becomes its due date.
Publish everything you want included. Only published content is exported.
Why set the dates in Blended Teaching rather than in Blackboard? You can set dates on the Blackboard items too. They do something different.
A Blackboard date controls the link in Blackboard: when the item appears on the course page, when it shows in your students' calendar, and when they can click through from there. That is what most of your students go by day to day.
What it cannot do is open or close the assessment. Blended Teaching is a separate platform and cannot see the dates you set in Blackboard, so a student who reaches the textbook another way can still start an assessment your Blackboard link is hiding, and a cutoff you set in Blackboard will not close it. An open date, a hard cutoff, or a late penalty has to be set in Blended Teaching to be enforced.
Set your dates in Blended Teaching before you export, and the two sides start out agreeing.
After the import, each system keeps its own copy. Change a date, change a point value, or add an assessment later and the change needs making in both places: in Blended Teaching, which is what actually runs the assessment, and in Blackboard, so your students see the right thing on their course page.
3.3. Export Your Course from Blended Teaching
In Blended Teaching, open your Control Center and go to the Course Structure page.
Select Export to Blackboard.
If you are offered a choice of format, choose Web Links and Assignments. If no choice appears, a single click gives you the right file.
Your browser downloads a .zip file. Keep it handy, you will import it into Blackboard in a moment.
You can also export from Settings → Course Details → Export Course.
3.4. Import the Package into Blackboard Ultra
Open your course in Blackboard and go to Course Content.
Select the options menu (the three dots) beside Course Content, then Import Content.
Choose Import Course Content, then select the .zip file you downloaded.
Blackboard uploads the file and shows Importing course content at the top of your course. A full textbook takes a few minutes, and you can work on something else while it runs.
📝 Blackboard may report exceptions when the import finishes. That is expected, and there is nothing to fix. The package carries a handful of Blackboard settings that Ultra courses do not use, and Blackboard lists them as it builds your course. Your folders, links, assignments, points, and dates all arrive. Select OK.
3.5. Import the Package into Blackboard Classic
If your course uses Blackboard Classic, the package goes in through the Control Panel:
Open your course. In the Control Panel, expand Packages and Utilities.
Select Import Package / View Logs, then Import Package.
Browse for the .zip file you downloaded from Blended Teaching. Choose Import Package rather than Import Common Cartridge, which is a different format.
Under Select Course Materials, choose what to bring in. Your package holds your course content and your gradebook columns, so select at least Content Areas and Grade Center Columns and Settings. Selecting all of them is fine too: the import only brings across what the package holds.
Select Submit. Blackboard runs the import in the background and emails you when it finishes, and you can check on it at Packages and Utilities → Import Package / View Logs.
Your content lands in the content area you imported into, as the folders, links, and assignments described below.
3.6. What Your Course Looks Like Now
Your textbook is installed, and your students can start using it right away. Each folder carries its module name, and every item opens straight into Blended Teaching. Your chapters, module overviews, and practice quizzes are links. Your graded quizzes, exams, and assignments are Blackboard assignments, showing their due dates on the course page.
The first time a student opens any of it, Blended Teaching asks them to sign in, and they will need the access code that came with their textbook.
Open Gradebook and you will find it already built:
One column per graded assessment, named exactly as it is in Blended Teaching, emoji and all, which makes your Blended Teaching items easy to pick out among any Blackboard ones.
Each column's maximum is that assessment's Blended Teaching points, and the course total is the sum of them.
Assessments with dates show them on the item and in your students' calendar.
3.7. What Your Students Can Reach
Every item in your Blackboard course opens your textbook in Blended Teaching. Once a student is in the textbook, they can move around all of it: the contents list, every chapter in it, and the quizzes and exams inside each module.
So what a student can open is decided in Blended Teaching, by what you have published there and by each assessment's availability dates. Hiding a link in Blackboard, or dating it so it appears later, removes the shortcut rather than the access. If you install your whole textbook and then hide the second half of it in Blackboard, a student who follows any of the remaining links can still reach those chapters through the textbook's contents.
If you release your course a module at a time, do it in Blended Teaching:
To hold a module back, leave it unpublished in Blended Teaching. It stays out of the textbook for everyone, whichever way they arrive.
To hold an assessment back, set its start date. Blended Teaching opens it on the day, and closes it again at its end date.
When you are ready, publish it in Blended Teaching. The links already sitting in your Blackboard course start working, with nothing to reinstall.
Anything without a start date, or with dates already open, is available as soon as a student can reach the textbook.
ℹ️ Could you just post a link to your textbook instead? You could, and it is enough if all your students need is a way in. Installing the package gives you three things one link does not: a Blackboard gradebook column for every graded assessment, your dates on your students' Blackboard course page and calendar, and a direct link to each chapter and quiz sitting where it belongs in your course.
3.8. Getting Grades into Your Blackboard Gradebook
You may not need this. Your students' scores live in the Blended Teaching gradebook and students can always see their own, so bringing them into Blackboard is for when the Blackboard gradebook is your course's record of grades. Many instructors do it after each major assessment, others once at the end of term.
The columns are already there, built by the install, so you are filling them in rather than creating them. Grades go in by hand, one column at a time.
In Blended Teaching, open your Control Center and go to the Gradebook. Each score is shown as a percentage.
In Blackboard, open your Gradebook and choose the assessment you are transferring.
Enter each grade as points: multiply the Blended Teaching percentage by the assessment's points and divide by 100. A 92% on a 30 point quiz is 27.6. Each column's maximum is that assessment's Blended Teaching points, so it is the number to work to.
ℹ️ Prefer to work from a spreadsheet? In your Control Center, open the Gradebook and choose Export → Download CSV. You get every student and every published assessment in one file, so you can convert the percentages to points in a column and read down the list rather than switching between two screens.
The scores you see are final. They already reflect the attempt you chose to keep, any late penalties, and any manual score adjustments.
A few other things worth knowing:
Your students can always see their scores in Blended Teaching. The Blackboard grade appears once you have transferred it.
If you change an assessment's points in Blended Teaching, make the same change to its Blackboard column, so the two keep agreeing.
3.9. Adding or Updating Content Later
ℹ️ You only need this for brand new items. Your installed links always point to the latest version of your textbook, so if you only edited content inside an existing chapter, your students already see the update.
⚠️ Importing the package a second time into the same course adds a second copy of everything, every item and every gradebook column, which doubles your course total. Add individual items using the steps below instead.
A chapter or practice quiz. In your Control Center, go to Course Structure, find the item, and select the eye icon to open it in the Blended Teaching player. Copy the URL. Then in Blackboard, select the + where you want it, choose Create → Link, give it the chapter's name, and paste the link.
A graded quiz, exam, or assignment. Add it as an Assignment rather than a link, so it gets the same gradebook column and dates as the ones your install created:
Copy its URL from the Control Center, as above.
In Blackboard, select + → Create → Assignment.
Name it exactly as it is in Blended Teaching. That is what makes it findable when you transfer grades.
Paste the Blended Teaching link into the instructions so your students can launch it.
Set the maximum points to the assessment's Blended Teaching points. This is the step to double check: a maximum that does not match is what makes a grade transfer go wrong.
Set the due date to match Blended Teaching.
4. Organize and Publish your Content
Now that the content is in Blackboard, you can test it out, move it around to the location you want, add any settings that are helpful, and when you're ready, make it available to your students.
5. Other Setup Steps
A few more things you may want to do:
Set your assessment dates in your Control Center. See How to set Dates & Points for Assessments.
Turn on grade syncing. If you installed through the Blended Teaching app (section 2), grades can flow automatically into your Blackboard gradebook. See How To Sync Grades with your LMS. If you installed from a course package, your grades move across as described in section 3.8.
Teaching more than one section? If each of your sections has its own Blackboard course, each one needs its own textbook. See A Guide to Teaching Multiple Sections.
Planning proctored exams? Proctoring of Blended-hosted quizzes runs through our Canvas integration, so on Blackboard the recommended path is exporting those exams and running them natively in Blackboard, where your institution's proctoring tools work as normal. Our team will walk you through it, just ask Blended AI to connect you.
Help your students get access. Share Getting Started with Your Blended Teaching Textbook so they know what to do.
See the full setup flow. New Class Launch Guide for Instructors, or if you're reusing a textbook from a previous semester, A Guide to Launching Your Class Using An Existing Textbook.