If you are an instructor who added content to one of these course shells and/or used them to provide content to students, you may have already archived them at the end of that term, and the archive would be saved on your computer. If you did not archive the course, you should do so by January 31, 2010, 11:59 p.m. (Central Time).  Instructions are available at the linked pages in the right hand navigation of this page.  If you have archived these courses previously, you might consider archiving again to take advantage of enhancements applied to the Archive feature in Blackboard over the past couple of years.

The primary purpose for archiving is to preserve course content and data as it exists at the point of archiving (usually at the end of a semester). At this time, there is no provision for allowing instructors to view or restore an archive file. This must be done through a special procedure at the Blackboard administrator level by certain Office of Distance Education staff. This process may be used for resolving disputes or verifying certain types of information after the course is removed from the Blackboard system. This would be a rare occurrence, since we actually leave the courses on Blackboard, fully accessible by instructors for 2 years. Courses removed after 2 years have a much lower likelihood of anyone needing access.

Instructors who feel that one of these courses needs to remain on Blackboard for an extended period of time may request a 1 year extension by sending an e-mail to DLHelp@jsu.edu by January 18, 2010, 4:30 p.m. (Central Time). The following information should be included in the message of the e-mail:  name, Blackboard user name, the Blackboard Course ID (which can be copied from your "My Courses" list), and the reason for the extension (i.e. student needing to complete an "I" grade, student access needed for some other reason, etc.).

Archive files are not intended for capturing and restoring course content for later use. If you as an instructor need access to course content for one of these courses, and that content is not saved in its original form on your computer, you may either save individual files out of Blackboard onto your computer, or you may use the Export feature in your Blackboard course to export a content only package to your computer, which can be imported by you into another course on Blackboard at a later time.  This is similar to the Course Copy feature, except you are capturing the content to a special file on your computer that you will then be able to import later into another course on Blackboard using the Import feature. (The Course Copy feature copies content between two courses which are both still on Blackboard.)  If you need to export or save content out to your computer from these courses, you need to do so by January 31, 2010, 11:59 p.m. (Central Time).

Again, the dates to remember regarding the removal of Fall 2007 Blackboard course shells are:

• January 18, 2010 - deadline for requesting an extension of Fall 2007 courses.
• January 31, 2010 - deadline for archiving or exporting Fall 2007 courses.
• February 1, 2010 - Fall 2007 courses will be permanently removed from Blackboard.