Like the expiration date on all Mars candy bars, in Blackboard there is an encoded course id that precedes the title of your course. It’s not common knowledge that this course id actually has some meaning.
Academic Computing reads all course information from Oasis before putting it into Blackboard. Oasis uses a course reference number(CRN) that repeats every year. This means that in different years the same CRN might refer to a different course, depending on which year you are looking at. The CRN in Oasis is not unique.
Here is a sample course id as you find in your Course List.
This breaks down into the following parts
| LIS6523 | This is the core portion of the course that most people refer to when talking about a course | ||||||||||||||||
| . | The dot is just a convenient visual separator | ||||||||||||||||
| 721 | Designates the section of the course. There is a special case where the section might be the word “all”. Instructors tasked with managing multiple sections of the same course can request the individual sections be merged into a new course site. The “all” designates the merged section. | ||||||||||||||||
| C | Indicates the semester the course is being run. | ||||||||||||||||
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| 07 | The 2 digit year |
Now you know.