Course Maintenance

What does archiving or exporting a Blackboard course mean?

Archiving refers to creating and storing in a secure, external location a copy of an old Blackboard course’s contents and data (e.g., everything the instructor and students have uploaded or entered into an old Blackboard course as well as the course structure such as folders, color scheme, banners, etc.).

By comparison, an export consists of only the course structure, content, and settings. Archives will preserve the course as it was delivered, while exports are useful for reuse in future semesters.

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Getting Started

In August 2013, DoIT announced the start of archiving Blackboard courses. At that time, Blackboard courses remained on the server indefinitely; however, this practice resulted in poor performance for the Blackboard application and made it difficult for instructors to locate current Blackboard courses. Today, our best practice is to maintain three academic years of Blackboard courses.

NOTE: Since Spring 2016, all past, present and future updates related to course archival will be posted to myUMBC in the Bb Announcements Group.

Courses that are archived and retired off the Blackboard production server may be restored to a master course shell or imported into a current course shell as content. On a case by case basis, a course may be completely restored with all data. An RT ticket is required for any request.