Course Functions allows designers to create backups of all their courses from one place. Designers can use this feature to save their courses at any stage of development and download them to their computer for safekeeping. Designers can also overwrite a course by uploading and restoring a backup of another course.

What do you want to do?

• Create a course backup
• Download a course backup
• Upload a course backup
• Restore a course backup
• Delete a course backup
• Reset courses

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Create a course backup | Top

You can back up your courses at any stage of development. After you create a backup, we recommend that you download it to your computer for safekeeping. If you want to use the course in another term or overwrite another course, you can upload and restore the backup. You can create more than one course backup at a time.

The time required to back up a course depends on both the size of the course and the speed of the server. Large courses may take more than 10 minutes to back up. If backups seem to take a long time, consult with your system administrator.

Note: If you back up a cross-listed course, it is a backup of the master course, which contains all of the course content and users from the cross-listed set. The backup's filename will contain the Course ID of the master course. For more information, see Cross-listed courses.

1. From myBlackboard, click Course functions. The Course and Backup Listing screen appears.
2. Select each course you want to backup. Note: You can create more than one course backup at a time.
3. Under Options, click Create backups. The Create Backup screen appears.
4. For each course backup, enter a short description.
5. Click Create. The course backups are created and automatically saved as a zip file.
6. Click Continue. The Course and Backup Listing screen appears with the backup course listed. The filename format is CourseID_MonthDay_Time.zip (e.g. Bio101_Dec6_1618.zip).

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Upload a course backup | Top

You can upload a course backup only after it has been downloaded to your computer. Do not unzip the backup file before uploading it.

1. From myBlackboard, click Course functions. The Course and Backup Listing screen appears.
2. Select the course for which you want to upload a backup. Note: You can upload only one course backup at a time.
3. Under Options, click Upload backup. The Upload Backup screen appears.
4. Next to Filename, click Browse. Your computer's file browser appears.
5. Locate and select the file you want to upload. The path and filename of your backup appears in the Filename text box.
6. Click Upload. The course backup is uploaded.
7. Click Continue. The Course and Backup Listing screen appears with the course backup uploaded.

Note: The time required to upload a course backup depends on the file size and on the speed of the server.

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Restore a course backup | Top

Note: If you want to restore a cross-listed course over another cross-listed course, contact your administrator.

Restoring a course backup allows you to overwrite either the existing course or another course on the server. Important: Before you restore a backup, we recommend that you back up the existing course and download it to your computer for safekeeping. If you don't like the changes in the restored course, you can upload and restore the existing course.

When you restore a course backup, you have the following options:

Replace users
This option restores the backup to overwrite both course content and the current list of users in the existing course. You use this option if a course is already in progress and the designer needs to retrieve course content and the list of users from the backup. The restored course contains the following:

• all users, their status (active or inactive), and their access (allowed or denied access) from the backup
• user-generated content from the backup, such as Discussions or Mail messages sent by students
• course content from the backup, such as quizzes and assignments

Update users

This option restores the backup to overwrite course content in the existing course but maintains the current list of users. You use this option if a course is already in progress and the designer needs to retrieve course content and user-generated content from the backup. The restored course contains the following:

• all users, their status (active or inactive), and their access (allowed or denied access) from the existing course
• user-generated content from the backup, such as Discussions or Mail messages sent by students
• course content from the backup, such as quizzes and assignments

Keep users
This option restores the backup to overwrite course content in the existing course but maintains the current list of users. You use this option if the designer wants to re-use content from another course. The restored course contains the following:

• all users, their status (active or inactive), and their access (allowed or denied access) from the existing course
• course content from the backup, such as quizzes and assignments

Reset course

This option restores the backup to overwrite course content in the existing course. You use this option if the designer wants to re-use content from another course. The restored course does not contain any users or user-generated content.

The time needed to restore a course depends on the course file size and the speed of the server.

To restore a course backup

1. From myBlackboard, click Course functions. The Course and Backup Listing screen appears.
2. Select the backup you want to restore. Note: You can restore only one backup at a time.
3. Under Options, click Restore backup. The Restore Course screen appears.
4. Select each course into which you want to restore the backup. Important: The selected courses will be overwritten by the backup.
5. Under Options, click an option. A warning message appears.
6. Click OK. The course backup is restored to the selected courses.
7. Click Continue. The Course and Backup Listing screen appears.

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Download a course backup | Top

We recommend that you download course backups to your computer instead of only keeping the backups on the server. If server problems occur, you will have backups of your courses. You can download only one course backup at a time.

1. From myBlackboard, click Course functions. The Course and Backup Listing screen appears.
2. Under the course for the backup you want to download, select the backup. Note: You can download only one backup at a time.
3. Under Options, click Download backup. Your browser's file download screen appears.
4. Follow the onscreen instructions. When the download is complete, the Course and Backup Listing screen appears and the course backup is downloaded to your computer for safekeeping.

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Delete a course backup | Top

You can delete more than one course backup at a time.

1. From myBlackboard, click Course functions. The Course and Backup Listing screen appears.
2. Under the course for each backup you want to delete, select the backup. Note: You can delete more than one backup at a time.
3. Under Options, click Delete backups. The Delete Backups screen appears.
4. Verify the list of course backups to be deleted.
5. Click Delete. A warning message appears.
6. Click OK. The Course and Backup Listing screen appears and the selected course backups are deleted.

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Reset courses | Top

Note: Depending on administrator settings, this option may not be available.

You can use Reset courses to remove users from your courses so you can reuse them for another term. The following course items are reset:

You can reset more than one course at a time.

1. From myBlackboard, click Course functions. The Course and Backup Listing screen appears.
2. Select each course that you want to reset.
3. Under Options, click Reset courses. The Reset Courses screen appears.
4. Verify the list of courses to be reset.
5. Click Reset. A warning message appears.
6. Click OK. The Course and Backup Listing screen appears and the selected courses are reset.

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