Starting with the Spring 2015 semester, 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 speed and performance of the learning management system. The size of the UMass Amherst Blackboard Learn database will be significantly reduced, optimizing the experience for all users. Instructors and students alike will benefit from faster loading times and greater download speeds.
Schedule & Rationale
As most Blackboard courses are offered annually, the course retention policy will allow instructors to retain access to their running course, as well as the course that preceded it a year prior. In the case of a course offered biennially (i.e. Spring 2013 and Spring 2015), the instructor will retain access to the older section until the end of the Add/Drop period of the running semester. In this fashion, instructors will have 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 a sample of the course removal schedule:
| Semester of course to be removed: | Running semester: | End of Add/Drop Period | Course removal date: |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spring 2013 | Spring 2015 | Monday, February 2, 2015 | *Monday, May 25, 2015* |
| Summer 2013, Session 1 | Summer 2015, Session 1 | Friday, May 22, 2015 | Monday, May 25, 2015 |
| Summer 2013, Session 2 | Summer 2015, Session 2 | Friday, July 10, 2015 | Monday, July 13, 2015 |
| Fall 2013 | Fall 2015 | Monday, September 21, 2015 | Thursday September 24, 2015 |
*please note that the removal date for Spring 2013 coincides with the date for Summer 2013, Session 1. All following semesters will adhere to the posted Add/Drop schedule specified above.
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 CPE eLearning administrators and by our host, UMassOnline.
Furthermore, some content may either be manually exported by the instructor or provided by the Blackboard Learn system administrators, 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 eLearning LMS administrators at elearning@cpe.umass.edu. |
| Archive | All of the course’s content, including student data, compiled in an archive package. | - | Contact eLearning LMS administrators at elearning@cpe.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?
Instructors anticipating a grade challenge should make sure to download a copy of the course's gradebook prior to removal and save it on their personal computers. In the event a grade challenge arises for a removed course and an instructor has not downloaded the Gradecenter, eLearning admins 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 eLearning System Administrators at elearning@cpe.umass.edu.