How often do you hear from a student that they cannot hand in an assignment because their computer crashed and they lost the file? Have you ever asked if they backed up the file? Now, have you ever asked that of yourself and your course work?
Backing up your course material offers many benefits
including allowing you to:
- Add material in another Course in Blackboard
- Copy your course into another school’s version of Blackboard
- Move the content and course into another Learning Management System, such as Desire 2 Learn (D2L)
It is also best practice to back-up your data – be it on
your personal computer or your courses in an LMS.
You can choose to “archive’ your course, but this will include all the student information and posts. If you only want to have a copy of the content of your course to save and take with you, you will need to export it and save the “package”. To do this:
- Select Packages and Utilities on the menu
- Select Export/Archive Course
- Select the Export Package grey button.
- Under “Select Course Material” choose “Select All”
- Naturally, if you want to save only a portion, you can select what you want.
- But be sure to choose the “Include only the forum, with no starter posts” option for discussions
- Select “Submit” (you are almost done)
- Wait…. The LMS is working.
- After a couple minutes (you may have to refresh the screen), you will see your file as a link on the Export/Archive Course page. This will be a zip file
- Select the Zip file and download it. This is the Course Package.
- Save the Course Package, the Zip File, in a location that you can find. You may want to rename the Course Package to something meaningful for you to understand.
That is it!
Please note: DO NOT UNZIP the file.
Unzipping the file may corrupt your package. Leave it untouched until you need it. Then move the content to another course or
LMS, such as D2L.
Follow these easy steps and you will be able to move your course, content and all, to most every modern Learning Management System (Yes, that includes D2L).
