Last Fall, with the help of the LIT Advisory Committee, we established a policy for archiving and removing courses from Blackboard. This policy was approved by Faculty Senate and the Provost’s Office. The purpose of removing old courses from Blackboard was to reduce storage needs and improve system performance. We planned to start removing courses in the Spring, but heard concerns that that faculty might need some time to archive course materials for use in future courses.  These concerns had us reconsider the timing of removing courses.

In August we began the process of removing courses on our Blackboard Production system to improve system performance. As previously announced, we have established a course retention policy for Blackboard and have established a course archive and purge cycle. We announced late last fall that we intended to remove courses older than 3 years from the production environment. Based on feedback we are starting slower than initially planned and starting with the oldest courses.

The revised schedule for removing courses is as follows:

• Summer 2018 – the following terms removed:
  • Fall 2011
  • Spring 2012
  • Summer 2012
  • Fall 2012
• Fall 2018  – the following terms will be removed:
  • Spring 2013
  • Summer 2013
  • Fall 2013
  • Spring 2014
• Spring 2019  – the following terms will be removed:
  • Summer 2014
  • Fall 2014
  • Spring 2015
  • Summer 2015
• Summer 2019  – the following terms will be removed:
  • Fall 2015
  • Spring 2016
• Fall 2019  – the following terms will be removed:
  • Summer 2016
• Spring 2020  – the following terms will be removed:
  • Fall 2016

By Fall 2019 we will be removing one term at a time, leaving three years of courses on the system. Before requesting archives we are validating that we have archives for all the courses pending removal and if archives are missing we will request those archives before removal of those courses.

Hopefully, the staggered removal of old courses will provide sufficient time for instructors to retain whatever course materials they would like to save from Blackboard in their own archives. If you find that you need access to a course that has been removed, you can make a request to LIT and we will restore the course for a limited time.