Bb Course Exports to Automatically Expire After 30 Days

Faculty can download course exports for archival needs

Course exports and archives are created when an instructor wishes to download a copy of their course. A course export contains all of the instructional materials, images and files, as well as the specific Blackboard course assets such as assessments and its organizational structure. A course archive includes everything in an export as well as student data such as assignments, interactions, and grades.

Although UMBC maintains Blackboard courses on its production site for three years, many faculty prefer to save copies of their courses to reference at a later date. Unfortunately, when these zip packages are created, they currently stay with the course shell, including when it is archived by UMBC, which impacts the entire system over time. Removing the exports from a course does not impact an individual course's performance, but will improve system performance.

Beginning in March 2022, Blackboard will automatically remove instructor-created course exports and archives after 30 days. Any instructor-created course exports and archives remaining in course shells prior to the March 2022 update will be automatically deleted in 90 days. Faculty will receive an automated email from Blackboard about this timeline.

Faculty will be notified about the course export expiration date in two ways from the Blackboard system:

When creating the package to export or archive a course
When sending the email notification that a package is ready to download

Additionally, faculty will see the removal date for any course export on the list of available packages to download.

Image 1. Example of Date Notification for Original Course Export

https://blackboard.umbc.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/doitnews/ultra-updates/Ultra_Export.png

Image 2. Example of Date Notification for Ultra Course Export

Since all package deletions are permanent, faculty will need to generate a new course export if they need to save a copy of their course. DoIT staff cannot recover course exports once they are automatically removed from the system.

Unless faculty need to save the zip package, DoIT staff recommend using the Course Copy tool rather than exporting a course for reusing course materials from semester to semester. If an instructor wants or needs to keep a copy of the zip package, they can download the file to a local drive or move the file to cloud storage outside the Blackboard environment. Faculty can also download their virtual gradebooks after closing out their courses each semester.

As always, if you have any questions about teaching, learning, and technology at UMBC, please consider the following options: