Archiving creates a snapshot of your entire course including students, content, and grades.
Archives can be created any time by the Instructor using the directions below. The file type created is compressed (.zip).
These directions work best in the latest version of Chrome or FireFox.
Tip: Closed courses are removed from Blackboard after 18 months. You should use these directions to download archives of each course to your own computer when grades are final.
To Archive:
1. Enter the course and under Packages and Utilities choose "Export/Archive Course"
2. Choose Archive Course
3. Select options
3. You will see a message alerting you that the archive is processing, and an email will be sent.
4. Use the REFRESH browser button and you should see your archive listed as a (.zip) file.
5. To save the file click the file name, or use the arrow menu and choose "OPEN". Your browser will download the file to your downloads folder or prompt you for a location. Do NOT open the file after downloading it.
Tip: Do not double-click a .zip archive once you have saved in locally on your computer. The file will de-compress and will no longer work in the Blackboard system.
Blackboard Course Content Backup
Managing course content is ultimately the responsibility of the Instructor. Your Archives (.zip) files can be used anytime as a source file to import just the content into one of your new courses. We recommend saving archive .zips of all your completed courses when they conclude each semester. Those archives can be stored on local drives or uploaded to your 365 OneDrive cloud storage as additional safety.
User Support keeps Blackboard courses on our Production Blackboard system for approximately 18 months. If the course is no longer on Blackboard and you do not have access to your own archive, restoring a course archive to the LMS system requires a formal request to User Services (helpdesk@ric.edu).There are two kinds of restore/recovery requests:
1. Restore a previous course that was removed from Blackboard
If the course was removed from Blackboard by User Services after the 18 month period, you can put in a request for us to restore that course. If the course was archived by the automated system without errors or corruption it takes only a few days to process the request. Please include the full Blackboard Course ID, Course Name, Section, and Term in your request.
2. Restore a current course to a previous version of that course due to lost content or accidental deletion.
This feature only saves a daily (2am) snapshot of the course for 7 days prior to the last activity in the course. Please include the full Blackboard Course ID and how far back you want to restore (example - 1 day, 2 days, etc.)