You may wish to download your course content from Blackboard either for your records, to save for accreditation reasons, or if you leave the university. There are several ways you can download your content. See the options below for retaining access to your course materials.
A few important notes:
- The most common need is to reuse course content in future semesters. If you just want to be able to reuse specific files, downloading the course files is the easiest and best option.
- If you want to save the course to reimport the content to Blackboard at a later date, exporting is the best option but do not unzip the folder.
- If you may need to completely restore the course, including student submissions and grades, archiving is the best option but you should NOT open the zipped folder or it will not import. Instructors or departments may request that certain courses be retained for accreditation purposes in Blackboard for longer than this period. Contact bbadmin@uark.edu to request an extension.
- Assignment annotations will not restore so if you want a record of those, you will need to download those individually and store on OneDrive.
- For accreditation purposes archiving may be sufficient but it is important NOT to unzip the folder or it will not restore.
- Note on securing student grade and FERPA information: OneDrive is the current recommended location to store protected FERPA data, such as student grade information. We recommend that all instructors create a OneDrive folder where any student FERPA data–including grade information, graded assignments, and student identifying information such as student ID numbers–is stored. IT Services recommends that these folders should not be shared with others for security reasons. Be sure to delete any downloaded files from your downloads folder on your computer.
Exporting Your Course
Exporting your course downloads all of the course content and materials into a .zip file that can be used to import back to Blackboard at a later date. This is primarily used to keep your course if you know you or someone may want to use this in the future.
- Login to Blackboard.
- Click Courses.
- Click Current Courses at the top.
- Select the term you wish to visit.
- Select the course you wish to export.
- Click Packages and Utilities under the Course Management in the left menu.
- Click Export/Archive Course.
- Click Export Course.
- Click the box to select all content.
- Click Submit.
- You will get the following notification: “Success: This action has been queued. An email will be sent when the process is complete.”
- You can either click Refresh on the Export/Archive Course page if you are there or you can go back to that page
- Click the link to download the archive of the course.
The .zip file will download to your computer. DO NOT UNZIP BLACKBOARD ARCHIVE OR EXPORT ZIP FILES. These files must remain zipped in order to be reuploaded to Blackboard.
Watch the video below to see how to archive a course.
Importing Your Course to Blackboard
To import an exported course to Blackboard, you will need to make sure you have the course exported as a .zip file.
- Login to the Blackboard Course you wish to import into.
- Click Packages and Utilities under the Course Management in the left menu.
- Click Import Package/View Logs.
- Click Import Package.
- Click Browse My Computer.
- Find and select the .zip file you want to import.
- Click Submit.
Watch the video to see it in action!
Downloading the Grade Center
In some cases, you may wish to download the Blackboard Grade Center to preserve your grading records. This can be done in any of your Blackboard Courses.
Downloading Graded Student Work
Blackboard allows you to download all student assignment submissions for individual assignments at once. However, this does not download all submissions for all assignments at once. You will need to repeat the process for each assignment.
This article shows you how to download all assignment submissions for an individual assignment.
Downloading All Course Files
You have the ability to download all course files from your Blackboard Course into a .zip file.
- In your Blackboard course, click Content Collection under the Course Management section in the left menu.
- Click the course ID.
- At the bottom of the page, click Show All.
- Click the box to select all.
- Click Download Package.
- All files will be downloaded to your computer.
Watch this video to see it in action!
Archiving Your Course
Archiving your course downloads all of the course content and materials including the grade center into a .zip file. This is primarily used to keep a record of your course. If you want to access these materials again to use in the future, we recommend that you export the course as well. It is easier to import an export of a course that it is to import an archive of a course. Archived course may not properly import.
- Login to Blackboard.
- Click Courses.
- Click Current Courses at the top.
- Select the term you wish to visit.
- Select the course you wish to archive.
- Click Packages and Utilities under the Course Management in the left menu.
- Click Export/Archive Course.
- Click Archive Course.
- Click the box next to Include Grade Center History if you wish to include the grade center in your archive.
- Click Submit.
- You will get the following notification: “Success: This action has been queued. An email will be sent when the process is complete.”
- You can either click Refresh on the Export/Archive Course page if you are there or you can go back to that page.
- Click the link to download the archive of the course.
The .zip file will download to your computer. DO NOT UNZIP BLACKBOARD ARCHIVE OR EXPORT ZIP FILES. These files must remain zipped in order to be reuploaded to Blackboard. If you want an archive file restored, you will need to contact the Blackboard Administrator. NOTE: some large courses might not be able to be restored from archive files.
Watch the video below to see how to archive a course.