You can continue to use Blackboard with no restrictions until the end of the 2026 summer semester. Faculty and staff will have access to a preliminary version of Moodle during the summer semester.

Starting in the winter semester 2026/27, Moodle will be the new central learning platform at Freie Universität, meaning that new courses will be created exclusively there. Blackboard will only be available to a limited extent in the winter semester 2026/27 and will no longer be accessible as of March 15, 2027.

Further information can be found in the schedule.

Instructors

Moodle is not yet available. The system will be made available to facutly and staff in the summer semester of 2026. An exact date has not yet been set. As soon as access to the new learning platform is possible, we will inform you on this website and via Blackboard. 

Students

Moodle is not yet available. The system will be made available to students in the winter semester 2026/27. You will be informed as soon as the new learning platform is available to you.

Instructors

If you are currently creating a new Blackboard course that you expect to use beyond the 2026 summer semester, please note the information in the Transfering courses from Blackboard to Moodle section.

You can already review your courses/organizations and check whether you want to transfer a course to Moodle, whether you do not want to transfer the course but want to back up the content collection (i.e., the files uploaded to the course), or whether the course is no longer needed. Any courses that are no longer needed can be hidden from your personal view in the Blackboard course list (see Blackboard FAQ - "Kursliste bearbeiten" point 2.).

Students

As soon as Moodle is available to you, we will offer comprehensive support services (e.g., help materials) for students.
Recommendation: At the end of each semester, be sure to save all content from your Blackboard courses that you will need in the long term. Also, make sure that your participation and exam results are correctly recorded in Campus Management, including for past courses.

During the summer semester of 2026, you can use Blackboard without restrictions.

In the winter semester of 2026/27, no new courses will be offered on Blackboard. The learning platform will be phased out gradually:

• Until December 31, 2026: Existing Blackboard courses can still be edited.
• From January 1, 2027: Only limited access (read-only) to Blackboard courses will be possible. This is due to the end of support for the version of Blackboard (Blackboard Learn Original) used at Freie Universität by the provider Anthology.
• From March 15, 2027: Blackboard will no longer be available (end of license).

It is strongly recommended that existing Blackboard courses are no longer used for teaching purposes during the 2026/27 winter semester.

After January 1, 2027, instructors will still be able to access the system and download individual materials. 

Starting on January 1, 2027, you will no longer be able to:

• Edit courses, e.g., post announcements, add or edit content, use communication tools, edit the grade center
• Change settings in courses
• View settings in courses, e.g., settings for tests

After January 1, 2027, students will still be able to access the system and download individual materials. 

However, you will no longer be able to make any changes within a course, i.e., upload documents, complete tests, create forum posts.

No, that is not necessary. All content in Blackboard will be deleted when the license expires on March 15, 2027. However, you can delete your content in advance if you wish to do so.

Moodle is a state-of-the-art, flexible, and powerful learning platform. 

Advantages of Moodle:

• A wide range of tools for collaboration and interaction
• Open source and hosted at Freie Universität
• Active, global community
• Proven use at many universities (e.g., in the Berlin University Alliance, in Germany, and worldwide)

Moodle offers all the basic functions of a learning management system. Below is an overview of the most important capabilities:

• Providing content: files (can also be uploaded via drag-and-drop), text area and text pages (with integration of links, images, video), links, learning modules (e.g., book, lesson, learning package/SCORM)
• Providing information: Announcements (forum that can only be edited by teachers, with automatic email delivery and subscription), messages to selected or all participants
• Submitting exercises, minutes, etc.: Assignments
• Collaboration and interaction: Forum, Wiki, Glossary (cooperative creation of entries), Database (collection of content), Choice, H5P integration
• Create surveys: Feedback
• Tests with the following question types, among others: Multiple Choice (single or multiple answers), True/False, Matching, Short Answer, Numerical, Essay, Ordering, various calculation types, various drag-and-drop types, Embedded Answers
• Structure courses: You can choose between different course formats (e.g., topic or weekly format) and organize your content into sections and subsections. Files can also be grouped into directories.
• Groups
• Assessment overview
• Set requirements for accessing content 

The new LMS Moodle is hosted locally at Freie Universität Berlin and maintained by FUB-IT.

The system is currently being set up. We will let you know as soon as Moodle is available.

As with the Blackboard LMS, all active members of Freie Universität have access to Moodle. Alumni do not have access. 

A "FU-account" is required to use Moodle. Further information on FU-accounts and how to apply for one can be found on the service portal: https://service.fu-berlin.de/servity/knowledgebasearticle/CAT-00120

The learning platform Moodle does not distinguish between courses and organizations. 

However, we are happy to set up courses for you that are not subject to standard academic semesters. You can use these Moodle courses in the same way as you previously used organizations in Blackboard. 

Existing courses and content from previous semesters that are still needed on the new platform will be transferred manually by instructors (or persons with the role of “Kurleiter”). If several persons with the role of “Kursleiter” are enrolled in your course, please agree among yourselves who will be responsible for transferring content.

Starting in the summer semester of 2026, detailed reference materials and workshops will be offered for the transfer. We will inform you about this as soon as possible. 

Depending on the structure of your course and the type and scope of the content, it may make more sense to completely recreate the course in Moodle or to export the course (or individual elements) in “Common Cartridge” format and restore it in Moodle. Even with Common Cartridge export, extensive manual rework in Moodle may be necessary. Not all content and settings can be exported via Common Cartridge or imported into Moodle. In addition, the structure of the course must be recreated in Moodle, as Moodle and Blackboard differ considerably in this respect.

Please note: The standard Blackboard course export is not compatible with Moodle!

Test questions can also be exported separately from Blackboard for compatible question types and imported into the question collection of a Moodle course.

Yes, this is possible, but only the most common question types and settings can be transferred. Integrated images and media are not transferred.

You have the following options:

1. Tests as a whole can be exported in Common Cartridge format as part of a course export and restored in Moodle.
2. Test questions can also be exported from individual tests or from pools as a zip package and imported into the question collection of a Moodle course. In this case, the “test framework” into which the questions are inserted must be recreated in Moodle.

The following question types can be imported with both options:

• True/False, Multiple Answer, Multiple Choice, Simple Fill-in-the-Blank, Essay

Additionally:

• Only with Common Cartridge: Likert Scale
• Only with test question export: Matching

User data such as student participation in forums, tests, or exercises, etc. cannot be transferred to Moodle.

Announcements, forum posts (e.g., in an FAQ forum), wiki pages, etc. that you have created yourself are also user data. If you want to reuse this data in Moodle, you must copy the texts manually from Blackboard. We recommend doing this in edit mode until December 31, 2026.

The amount of time needed to transfer courses depends on the following factors:

• Complexity of the courses
• Features used
• Number of courses
• Prior knowledge of Moodle

We recommend that you start transferring courses and materials during the summer semester.

Please note the following when creating a new Blackboard course:

• Choose a relatively flat structure for your Blackboard course with one or at most two folder levels. A nested structure with many parent and subfolders is more difficult to transfer to the new learning platform.
• For tests, use the following question types, which can be imported into Moodle later: 
  • True/False, Multiple Answer, Multiple Choice, Simple Fill-in-the-Blank, Essay

If you have any further questions or need advice, please feel free to contact us. 

It is possible to transfer courses from another Moodle system by backing them up and restoring them. Please note that your content may be displayed differently in the systems due to version differences or plugins.

Since 2004, Freie Universität has been using Blackboard, a central learning management system (LMS) with numerous functionalities and a wide range of applications. The requirements for the LMS have changed significantly in the course of the increasing digitization of university teaching and ongoing technological developments. 

The FutureLMS project analyzed current and future requirements for the LMS and evaluated technical solutions. Various stakeholders were involved in the process; user requirements were gathered through group and individual interviews as well as a university-wide survey. Based on the results of a university-wide evaluation, the Executive Board decided in March 2025 to follow the recommendation of the Service Portfolio Board and switch central learning platforms from Blackboard to Moodle, an open-source platform. The transition to the new LMS is scheduled for the 2026/2027 winter semester.

Moodle is a state-of-the-art, flexible, and powerful learning platform. 

Advantages of Moodle:

• A wide range of tools for collaboration and interaction
• Open source and hosted at Freie Universität
• Active, global community
• Proven use at many universities (e.g., in the Berlin University Alliance, in Germany, and worldwide)

Ask us during the open office hour via Webex or send us an email at futurelms@it.fu-berlin.de.