As an ongoing effort to ensure that Blackboard runs as quickly and as efficiently as possible, a Blackboard Archival Policy will go into effect July 1, 2015.
The Blackboard subcommittee (comprised of representatives from ITS, COLRS, and online coordinators) researched practices of other universities, consulted with the Registrar, and proposed a recommendation to the Academic Technology Committee as well as the Campus Senate. Both groups endorsed the policy.
Courses will be retained on Blackboard for 3 years, on a single server (http://bb.uis.edu), after which they will be purged. As of Fall 2015, the courses available in Blackboard will be Fall 2012, Spring 2013, Summer 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, Summer 2014, Fall 2014, Spring 2015, and Summer 2015. All older courses will be purged.
Moving forward, each semester the oldest courses will be deleted from Blackboard, keeping the course load at 3 years. Faculty will receive a reminder prior to the deletion.
Please be aware that there are options for retaining course content longer than three years. Instructions for each option are linked below.
- Use Blackboard’s built-in tool for archiving courses
- The Export/Archive Course tool creates a zip file that contains all the content for the course.
- Save the .zip file to your UIS Box.com or Google Drive storage space
- The zip file can be then be re-imported into Blackboard at a later time, if needed
- Request a GOLD course from COLRS
- Many faculty already take advantage of GOLD courses, which serve as a template. GOLD courses are not taught from; they are merely a course shell where faculty can keep updated content that can easily be copied to live course as needed.
Read the policy approved by the Academic Technology Committee and the Campus Senate. If you have any questions, please contact COLRS at colrs@uis.edu or Kara McElwrath at kmcel2@uis.edu.
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