Faculty Support Services for Teaching with Technology

At the end of the semester there are several course clean-up activities to remove current work from the course to get it ready for next semester. Tasks include removing students and TAs from the course, collecting student work, and exporting the grade book. If you won’t be using the course again, you can archive the course and/or have it deleted.

• Collecting and archiving student work (Dropbox, assignments, discussion)
• Exporting the grade book
• Removing users from your course
• Archiving your course
• Recycling your course
• Deleting a course
• Additional suggestions

If you used the Digital Dropbox for homework submission, follow these steps to make sure that you won't lose any uploaded files:

1. Go to the Control Panel.
2. Under Course Tools, click Digital Dropbox.
3. Right-click on each file name and choose "Save Link As" or "Save Target As".
4. Save the file to your disk or hard drive.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 for each file in the Dropbox.

Once you collect all the files, delete the contents of the Dropbox.

1. Go to the Control Panel. 
2. Under Course Options, click Recycle Course. 
3. Select Digital Dropbox option. 
4. Type Remove in the text box. 
5. Click Submit.

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If you used the Assignments feature for homework submission, follow these steps to download all of the files:

1. Go to the Control Panel.
2. Under Assessment, click Gradebook.
3. Click on the name of the assignment.
4. On the Item Options page, click Item Download.
5. Click Check All.
6. Click Submit. All of the files submitted for that assignment will be packaged in a .zip file.
7. Right-click on the "download assignments now" link and choose "Save Link As" or "Save Target As".
8. Save the file to your disk or hard drive.
9. Repeat steps 1-8 for each assignment.

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If you want to archive Discussion board postings. 

1. Go to Control Panel > Discussion Board
2. Click on the forum which you want to archive
3. Click the Archives link at the bottom of the forum
4. Click the Add Archive button at the top of the page, on the following screen type the name of the Archive and description (optional)
5. Select if you'd like archived messages to be available to users
6. Click Submit button.
7. Click the Modify button next to the archive you've created on the following screen
8. All available threads will be listed in the section: "Select threads in forum to move to archive", select the discussion thread you wish to add to the archive.
9. Click Submit.

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If you used the Blackboard gradebook to store your students' grades, follow these steps to save a copy of the gradebook:

1. Go to the Control Panel.
2. Under Assessment, click Gradebook.
3. Click Download Grades.
4. Click the Download button.
5. Follow the instructions for saving and opening your gradebook file.

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Removing users from your site is a good thing for you and your students! Do this before you allow the next round of students to enroll in the site. If new students get mixed together with the old ones, it will be a bit of a hassle to sort things out. Removing users after each semester will also ensure that only current course sites appear on students' My Blackboard page.

To remove all students from your site, follow these directions.

Users with administrative access to your site (instructors, TAs, graders, and course builders) will NOT be removed.

1. Go to the Control Panel.
2. Under Course Options, click Recycle Course.
3. Scroll down section #2.
4. Check the box next to "Users".
5. Type the word "Remove" in the box, without the quotes.
6. Click the Submit button.

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To remove specific users, follow these directions.

1. Go to the Control Panel.
2. Under User Management, click Remove Users from the Course.
3. Click the Search button to see a list of everyone enrolled in your site.
4. Check the boxes next to the users who should be removed.
5. Type the word "Yes" in the box, without the quotes.
6. Click Submit.

If you know you are probably not going to use your Blackboard course again, you can Delete the course but create an archive file that you can save to your computer. 

1. Go to the Control Panel. 
2. Under Course Options, click Archive Course. 
3. Click Submit on the following page to begin archiving process. 
4. Once you see the Receipt page, click on the link to download the archived course package file to your computer.

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Please note: this will permanently remove the content you selected from your Blackboard site. Make sure you keep a copy of the materials.

1. In the Control Panel, in the Course Options area, click Recycle Course
2. To “Select Content Materials to Remove” check the sections for your site to be removed.
3. In Step 3, Type Remove to complete this request in the box.
4. Click Submit to remove the materials from your site.

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If you'll never want to use your Blackboard site again, and no one else in your department will use it either (next semester's instructor or TA, for example), please write to us at atc_support@cornell.edu and ask us to delete it for you.

If you personally are done using Blackboard, we can also remove you from our Blackboard email list and from the Blackboard system itself; just mention that in your email.

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• If you have older course sites on Blackboard you are not using this semester, please consider changing the course settings to make those courses "Unavailable."
• Disable Self Enrollment and Guest Access. To modify these options, go the Control Panel and click Settings. Then click on Enrollment or Guest Access.

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• Computing and Communications Center Room 124 Garden Ave.
• Open Monday-Friday 9:00AM - 5:00PM during the academic year
• Closed on university holidays

Maintenance Schedule

Any regular system maintenance and server restarts for any of our services will be scheduled weekdays between 5:00 am and 7:00 am. All users should be aware that a system may become unavailable during this maintenance time.

• (607) 255-9760
  atc_support@cornell.edu

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