Our LMS team just enabled the new TinyMCE editor in Blackboard (v9.1SP9). There is a significant change to how re-usable objects were handled with the previous VTBE editor. We knew this was coming, but (at least I) didn’t really know what the ‘this’ was until it actually was installed.
Here’s some notes on what I’ve found so far. This may not be all encompassing, but just some gotchas I found that are specific to Faculty of Medicine.
The summary of the change to VTBE is: html re-usable objects can no longer be edited directly in a course.
It’s important to make the distinction between an ‘html object’
and an ‘html file’ 
. html objects are displayed inline in a course (as soon as the content page is rendered). An html file exists as a link on a content page, and must be clicked before it is rendered. This entry is talking only about ‘html objects’, those that display inline.
One of the nice things (I thought) of re-usable objects in BB9, pre-VTBE, was the ability to create an html re-usable object as an Item in a course, and be able to edit it either from the course or from the Content Collection (and BB-drive). With this approach, users could edit from the course, and we (IT) could clean up the mess with BB-Drive. As well, the content could be versioned and tracked using the Content Collection features. No longer. Time to move on….
Now, with VTBE, there are two options:
- Create an Item in a Course. This is an html document that exists within the course only, and does not have an imprint in the Content Collection. It can only be edited in the course. (To add a bit of confusion, you can Discover Content in a course, which will make a copy of an html re-usable object that exists in the Content Collection. Once the copy is made, it has no relation to its parent and is as if you started from scratch.) The problem with this approach is you lose all the nice Content Collection features, such as versioning and tracking. This is the downside to being able to edit within the course.
- Build a Re-usable HTML object in the Content Collection, then add it using ‘Insert File’ in the VTBE. This content can only be edited in the Content Collection. Cannot be edited in the course. In the course with edit mode off, the content displays inline. When editing the Item, the content appears as a link.
There is one other gotcha: If you created an Item and saved it as a re-usable object in the old editor, you can edit it from the Content Collection or BB-Drive and the changes will be reflected in the course.
However, as soon as you edit this content in the course, a new copy is made and it is disassociated from the original copy. The original copy remains in the Content Collection , but is orphaned. Similar to using the Discover Content option.
A pro-active approach might be to make decisions about all your previous re-usable objects and make the necessary changes.
Possible approaches (aligned with previously defined functionality above):
- Edit the object in course (to create the disassociation) and delete the Content Collection version to avoid confusion. Only editable from the course. Note: you lose versioning and tracking.
- Delete the Item in the course and re-create with an Insert File link to the Content Collection re-usable html object as the only entry in the Item. Only editable from the Content Collection.