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Contact Information:
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Archiving Your Blackboard Course
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In order to be able to re-use your Blackboard course for a later term, you should be sure to create an archive. Academic Computing will also keep backups of all previous courses, but it is generally wise practice to have multiple backups – so, to ensure your peace of mind, and to avoid losing important work, you can create your own course archives. PLEASE NOTE: Following these steps will NOT remove your course from Blackboard or make it unavailable to you or your students. You may archive your course as often as you’d like—it’s simply an easy way to back up the work you’ve put into your online course materials!
Before Beginning: Getting to the Course Control Panel
Like all instructor course modifications, you can archive your course from the “Control Panel”:
- From the Blackboard welcome page, click on the title of your course under “Courses you are teaching”.
- From the bottom of the buttons on the left side of the screen, choose “Control Panel”.
Step One: Your Online Gradebook
If you are using the online gradebook feature of Blackboard, you will have to back up your gradebook separately from the course archive—that information is not automatically included.
- Under “Assessment” in the right column of choices, click on “Online Gradebook”.
- Click on “Export Gradebook”.
- You’ll see the following instructions:
| Instructions |  |
The exported gradebook has been saved according to the sorting and filtering options on the Spreadsheet View. To download the file to your computer, follow the instructions below.
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- To save the file to a PC, right-click on 'Save Exported Gradebook', and select 'Save link as ...' (Netscape) or 'Save target as ...' (Internet Explorer). To save it to a Macintosh, click and hold down the mouse button on 'Save Exported Gradebook', and select 'Save this link as ...' (Netscape) or 'Save target as ...' (Internet Explorer). Note that for Netscape 6 on the Macintosh, the menu will only appear if you hold the control key down while clicking on the link.
- Choose the directory in which to save the file.
- After saving the file, open Microsoft Excel or a similar program, and go to the File menu. Select Open. On a Macintosh, this may be the only way to open the file, as the system may not automatically associate the saved file with Excel.
- Locate the directory where the file is saved and double-click the filename (the file is named gradebook.csv by default.)
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- RIGHT-Click on “Export Gradebook”, and choose “Save Target As…” (or “Save Link As…”) from the context menu.
- Navigate to the place you would like to save your exported gradebook data, and then click the “Save” button.
You will be able to open your saved gradebook using Microsoft Excel or any other spreadsheet program.
Step Two: Archiving the Course
After you have saved a copy of the gradebook, return to the course control panel and follow these steps to archive the rest of your course.
- Under “Course Options” in the left column of choices, click on “Course Utilities”.
- Click on “Archive Course”.
- Under section 1, click on the boxes next to “Content”, “Course Settings”, “Assessments and Pools” and “Discussion Board”. Do NOT check the box next to “Users and Groups” – if you do, your currently enrolled students will be automatically enrolled in the blackboard course when you restore the archive next term.
- Under section 2, make sure the circle next to “Blackboard 5.5 package format” is filled in.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click “Submit”.
- When the “Receipt” appears, click on the “here” link to begin to download your course archive.
- You may see a box prompting you to “Open” or “Save” the document—click “Save”.
- Navigate to the place you would like to save your course archive, and then click the “Save” button.
- When finished saving, click the “OK” button.
Congratulations—you have now saved a backup copy of your gradebook and course materials to your own computer! Contact Academic Computing when you would like to use your archive to re-use your course.
Keywords: Blackboard for Instructors
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