Archiving myLesley Courses (Faculty)

Modified on Thu, 07 Apr 2022 at 11:11 AM

TABLE OF CONTENTS


Course Lifecycle Policy

Courses in myLesley are disabled after a certain time period. Undergraduate and Masters' level courses are disabled 2 years from the end date of the course. Doctoral level courses are disabled 5 years from the end date of the course. Exceptions for any extended access for individual faculty to myLesley/Blackboard data beyond the course lifecycle are for research purposes only and require approval of the Institutional Review Board (IRB). Please review the Lesley University Faculty Handbook for more information on this topic. 


If you wish to archive materials from your courses, please refer to the following tutorials. We recommend that you take these steps as soon as the course has ended. 



Archive Your Course

If you wish to archive a past or recently ended course, we recommend using the Course Archive function. Archiving your course creates a frozen snapshot or permanent record of your course, which you may wish to reference at a later time. Please note that your archived courses will not contain student data, including student Discussion Board posts or submitted assignments. 

Your archive package will download as a .zip file, which can be imported into a future myLesley course or safely saved in your OneDrive on Office 365. Please note that you cannot interact with the content of the .zip file directly but must import the entire package into a myLesley/Blackboard course in order to view its contents.


 

To archive your course, go to the course Control Panel, select Packages and Utilities and select Export/Archive Course.

screenshot of export/archive course link



This will bring you into the Export/Archive Course Area. Click Archive Course at the top of the page.

screenshot of archive course button

This will bring you to the Archive Course area. Select your copy options (if you use the Grade Center in your course we recommend checking the Include Grade Center History button) and select your file attachments (in order to retain anything you have uploaded into the course we recommend selecting Copy Links and Include Copies of the Files in the Course Default Directory).


screenshot of copy options



Once you have finished, click Submit. It may take several minutes for your course to archive. You will receive an email notification once the archive has completed.


Once you course has archived you must go back into your course and download your archive file.



Download the Archive Package

To download your archive, go to the Control Panel, select Packages and Utilities and select Export/Archive Course.

screenshot of export/archive course link


 

This will bring you into the Export/Archive Course Area. Once your archive has processed you will see it listed on the page. Click on your file to download. Please note that you will have 30 days to download the archive file. After this time the archive package will be deleted. screenshot of archive file


Once you download the archive package we recommend saving it to your computer or a cloud storage service (such as OneDrive on Office 365). Please note that you cannot interact with the content of the .zip file directly. Instead, you will need to import the .zip file package into a myLesley/Blackboard course (such as your My Space or a future offering of the course) in order to view its contents. 



Archive Student Work

If you would like to create archives of student-submitted work, you will need to do so separately. Your archived myLesley courses will not contain student data, including student Discussion Board posts or submitted assignments. 


Collect and Save Discussion Boards

In order to retain this information, complete with student names, you will need to collect your discussions and save them to PDF. Detailed instructions may be found here: Search and Collect Discussions.


Collect and Save Submitted Assignments

You may download and save all student-submitted assignments via the Grade Center. You may bulk-download students' original submissions, but must download annotated PDFs of graded assignments individually. See Download Assignments for detailed instructions. 


Save Blogs, Journals, and Wikis (convert to PDF)

In order to save student content in blogs, journals, and wikis, you will need to convert each blog, journal, or wiki page to PDF. Instructions for creating a PDF of your myLesley content may be found here: How to Make Printable Versions of your Weekly Sessions in Blackboard



Back Up Your Content to a Cloud-Based Service

Once you have archived and saved copies of your content to your computer, we recommend using a cloud-based storage solution, such as One Drive, Google Drive, or Dropbox, to ensure that you will be able to access your content from any computer at any time. We strongly recommend backing up all of your materials to cloud-based storage.


Lesley University provides access to Microsoft OneDrive for all faculty, staff, and students. To access your free OneDrive account, go to Microsoft Office 365 and log in with your Lesley credentials. 



Copy Your myLesley Course

If you need to copy the content of a previous course into your upcoming course on myLesley, we recommend using the Course Copy function. See Copying myLesley Courses for detailed instructions.

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