Respondus Exam Authoring Tool: Create & Publish to Blackboard Ultra Course

This article provides instructions for uploading/exporting your exam from Respondus Exam Authoring Tool to your course in Blackboard Ultra.  The Respondus Exam Authoring Tool is a Windows-only application used for creating exams offline in Word or RTF, and publishing exams directly to Blackboard. The software provides many time-saving tools such as equation editors, web links, and multimedia functions. For more information about using Respondus, please see their help page or refer to the instructor user guide. Instructions for installation/updates can be found in our other Knowledge Base article which will require you to login using your UND credentials.

Publish an Exam to your Blackboard Ultra Course

After you complete the Respondus Exam Authoring Tool installation and update steps, you can start importing your exams into your course in Blackboard Ultra. It is very important that you follow the steps exactly as written, especially those in bold; the exam upload may fail if the correct settings are not selected. Note: There may be delays at various points while Respondus processes your request. Please wait a few seconds for the action to complete before clicking anything on the screen.

1. Open the Respondus Exam Authoring Tool application, and either create a new test or open an old one.
2. After you have opened a test, click the Preview + Publish tab. You may Preview the test (optional).
3. When you are ready to send the test to Blackboard, select Publish from the menu on the left.
4. Click to open the Publish Wizard.
   Note: If you have not yet added the UND Blackboard server, you must do that now. To do that: In the 'Blackboard Server' box click add new server, and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the process. After the server has been added, you may proceed to step 5.
5. Select the UND Blackboard server (you may have just created it) in the Blackboard Server box, and click next.
6. You will now be told to log into Blackboard. Click OK. A pop-up window with the NDUS login page will appear.
7. Log into Blackboard using your regular username (firstname.lastname) and password.
8. After you have logged in, click Continue After Login (in top-right corner of the pop-up window). This will close the Blackboard window and return you to Respondus.
9. Back in the main Respondus window, click OK to acknowledge that you are logged in.
10. On the next page in item 1, use the drop-down menu to select the course you would like to publish the exam to.
11. In item 2 under Exam/Survey: In the Create New Exam box, enter a title — please do not use special characters, as this can cause problems with Blackboard.
12. In item 2 under Pool: Be sure that 'Create new Pool' is NOT selected, and that there is no pool title in that box.
13. In item 3: Un-select all boxes in the 'Additional options for Exam/Survey' section. Click Next. 
14. Wait for the process to complete. When it is done, click Finish.
15. Your exam should now be available in your Blackboard course site! To find it, please log in to Blackboard, open your course, and look for a folder titled Undeployed Tests. The test that you just uploaded (and any future tests from Respondus Exam Authoring Tool) will appear inside of this folder automatically.
16. To make the test available to students, you will need to deploy it — please see Blackboard's help page for more information. You will need to
    1. Move the test out of the Undeployed Tests folder and place it where you want it to appear in the course.
    2. Then, select the three dot button on the right side of the exam block and choose Edit.
    3. On the next page, change the Assessment Settings of the exam to include the due date, attempts, or any other settings you wish to enable and make sure to save the settings.
    4. Lastly, at the top of the page, make sure to change the visibility of the exam for students by either choosing to make it visible to students or create release conditions for the exam.