| End-of-Semester
Best Practice
At the end of a semester,
that last thing most of us want to do is more paper work
or - in the online environment - more "clicking" work.
However, several best practices for managing Bb courses have been
identified that can increase both the security and reusability of
your hard work throughout the semester. For questions about these
or other procedures, please contact your CHaLK team member or web-courses@ouhsc.edu.
These best practices generally
fall into three (3) areas:
Course
Availability
It is recommended that
each Bb course be re-set to unavailable at the end of the
semester, after you anticipate the last authorized student access
for course work or to retrieve grades. After a course is made unavailable,
students will not be able to see this course in their list courses
at login and will not longer be able to access or participate in
the class online. Making a course unavailable will ensure that no
students continue to access your course content, assessments, etc.
after the official end of the course semester.
How to make
a course unavailable:
- Click the Settings link in the Course Options
section of the course Control Panel
- Click the Course Availability link.
- In the Set Course Availability section, click the No radio button.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the
 button.
^ Top
Gradebook
Export
While there is no reason
to expect a loss of data from a course, and even though all official
grades are submitted through other mechanisms, many faculty will
feel more comfortable having a copy of a Bb course gradebook stored
outside of their Bb course. Blackboard includes a function that
allows faculty or anyone with instructor-level access to the gradebook
to export or retrieve a copy of the gradebook from any Bb course
and copy it to a file on your computer than can be opened with Microsoft
Excel. This file can then be saved on your hardrive or external media for retrieval or more sophisticated statistical analysis.
How to export
the gradebook:
- Click the Gradebook link in the Assessments
section of the course Control Panel
- Click the Gradebook link
- Select the
 Download
Grades button on the Gradebook toolbar
- Read the instructions on the Download Gradebook page.
- Click the Download button.
- Click the OK button from the File Download
window.
- Select a location on your computer's hardrive to download
the file to.
- Click the Save button.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the button.
^ Top
Course
Archive
Current policy for retention
of courses in Blackboard is "indefinitely," though clearly
this will have to be reviewed within the next few years. Therefore,
there is no reason to expect the removal of a course from Blackboard
for any reason. However, individual professors may feel more comfortable
having a "copy" of their entire Blackboard course in a location
under their direct control. To copy an entire course - including
student work, discussion boards, assessments with scores, etc. -
Bb includes a course archive tool. This tool will created an encrypted
and compressed file that can be downloaded to your computer or external
storage (disk, CD, etc.). This file cannot be opened outside of
the Blackboard application, but, should the need arise, can be uploaded
back to Bb and the course fully restored.
How to archive
a course:
- Select the Archive Course link in the Course
Options section of the course Control Panel
- Select the button.
- When you receive the confirmation receipt, select the link
"Click here to download the exported course site"
- Select a location on your computer's hardrive to download
the file to.
^ Top |
: e-Learning at OUHSC: 
