All courses offered two years prior to any running semester will be archived and removed from UMass Amherst's Blackboard Learn production environment. This is a necessary maintenance process that will remove inactive courses in order to improve the user experience and performance of the learning management system.
Schedule & Rationale
The course retention procedure will allow instructors to retain access to their running course, as well as all of their courses that preceded it up to 7 semesters - or nearly two academic years - prior. In the case of a course offered biennially (i.e. Spring 2016 and Spring 2018), the instructor will retain access to the older section(s) until the end of the Add/Drop period of the running semester. This allows instructors ample time between the scheduling of their courses in SPIRE and the end of the Add/Drop period to configure their Blackboard course shells with the proper content, if needed.
Below is the current course removal schedule.*
| Running Semester | End of Running Add/Drop Period | Course Removal Semester | Course Removal Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fall 2019 | 9.16.19 | Up to Fall 2017 | 9.24.19 |
| Spring 2020 | 2.3.20 | Winter - Spring 2018 | 2.10.20 |
| Summer 2020 | 5.22.20 | Summer 2018 | 5.19.20 |
| Fall 2020 | TBD | TBD | TBD |
*Some dates may be affected pending the availability of archives
Concerns
What will be removed?
All records and content associated with the course will be removed from Blackboard. However, please note that none of your data will be permanently deleted. Archives of your courses, containing all content and data, are procedurally generated after the end of each semester.
Archived copies of your courses are stored both locally by the OE Instructional Technologists and by our host, UMassOnline.
Furthermore, some content may either be manually exported by the instructor or provided by the Blackboard Instructional Technologists, by request. For information on what data can be retained, please refer to the table below:
| Type of export: | Data Included: | Data excluded: | Instructions: |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grade Center | A complete record of a course’s Grade Center compiled in .xls or .csv format. | All course content. | Download grade center columns |
| Course Files | A package of every file uploaded to the course shell. | All Blackboard tool interactions (discussions, assignments, tests), student roster and data. | Download Your Course Files |
| Backup | All of the course's content compiled and exported in a .zip file package. | Student roster and data. | Contact Instructional Technologists at elearning@oe.umass.edu. |
| Archive | All of the course’s content, including student data, compiled in an archive package. | - | Contact Instructional Technologists at elearning@oe.umass.edu. |
Are incompletes affected?
Any course in which a student is actively fulfilling an incomplete will not be removed from the system until the incomplete access closes. The course will then be added to the removal queue for the following semester.
What about grade challenges?
In the event a grade challenge arises for a removed course and an instructor does not have a downloaded copy of the Gradecenter, Instructional Technologists can restore your course to the Blackboard Learn environment in order to retrieve specific data.
For questions regarding the Blackboard Learn Course Retention Policy, please contact the Blackboard Instructional Technologists at elearning@oe.umass.edu.