ITS is now archiving Blackboard courses with a term end date greater than 395 days old (one year plus 30 days). The change is needed to ensure that the College complies with the storage space limits defined in its agreement with Blackboard.
Upcoming archiving dates:
- Courses from term 2021w will be disabled and archived on May 23rd, 2022.
- Courses from term 2021s will be disabled and archived on Sept 19th, 2022.
- Courses from term 2021f will be disabled and archived on Jan 16th, 2023.
- Courses from term 2022w will be disabled and archived on May 22nd, 2023.
Please review your courses and backup what you need.
BLACKBOARD COURSES
Should you have questions associated with saving existing course materials for reuse, the CAE has created a Guide for Exporting Courses and Course Components. This guide explains:
- The differences between a Blackboard archive and export file and their purposes
- How to create an export file of a Blackboard course site
- How to import an export file into a Blackboard course site
In particular, please note that while you are encouraged to make backups of important materials that are scheduled for deletion, it is rare that instructors need to create an archive file of their courses. Archive files include course content, course statistics, user information, and user interactions with the course. If a situation arises where it is important to be able to access content and user information from previous courses, ITS has access to archives of all courses that have been deleted and can supply that information on request.
Instead of an archive, we would recommend creating an export of any materials that you might need from your courses. This will allow you to save all of or a selection of your course content for reuse, including course content, assessments, and settings. In addition to the Guide for Exporting Courses and Course Components, you can also refer to this video on exporting and importing a Blackboard course that is available in the CAE video library.
COLLABORATE VIDEOS
Starting January 17th, 2022, ITS will be archiving Blackboard Collaborate videos as a part of our Blackboard Course archiving process announced earlier this year. The criteria used to determine which Collaborate videos to archive will be the same as the course archiving process. Any video contained within a course that has a term end date greater than 395 days old (one year plus 30 days) will be flagged for archiving.
See below for more information on if you should download your recordings and where to store them.
Should I download a copy of my Blackboard Collaborate Ultra recording?
Are you planning to use the recording in the future?
If yes, download the recording.
If no, you don’t need to download the recording.
Where should I save it?
Do you plan to use the recording in a future Blackboard course?
If yes, upload the recording to a video streaming platform, like MS Stream or YouTube.
If no, save the recording to your preferred storage, such as a computer hard drive, USB drive, or cloud storage.
Additionally, the CAE has created several useful videos to assist with the transition. They can be found in the links below:
Downloading Blackboard Collaborate Ultra Recordings
Storing files in Microsoft OneDrive
Uploading and Captioning Lesson Recordings Using MS Stream
As is the case with course archives, ITS has access to archives of all Collaborate videos that have been deleted and can supply that information on request.