As we approach the end of the University's first full term on the Canvas Learning Management System, it is important that faculty and students take some time to think about the upcoming retirement of the previous Learning Management System, CourseWeb (Blackboard Learn). Here are five important things that everyone should consider before that system is retired.

CourseWeb (Blackboard Learn) will be fully retired on Friday December 11^th, 2020 at 11p.m.

Direct access to CourseWeb for faculty, staff, and students will end on Friday December 11^th, 2020. After this date, a small number of administrative staff will have limited access to CourseWeb (Blackboard Learn) for record retention purposes.

CourseWeb (Blackboard Learn) content transferred to Canvas does not include student submissions or grades.

All CourseWeb (Blackboard Learn) course content from the summer 2018 (2187) - spring 2020 (2204) terms has already been transferred to Canvas. All CourseWeb content from the summer 2020 (2207) term will also be transferred to Canvas in the very near future. Due to technical differences between the two Learning Management Systems, the transferred content does not include student assignment submissions or grade records. This information will be archived and stored outside of Canvas, and faculty and students are encouraged to also download personal copies for their own records.

The University is archiving everything to a storage system outside of CourseWeb (Blackboard Learn)

In the past the University has routinely and automatically created archive copies of CourseWeb (Blackboard Learn) courses and stored those outside of the CourseWeb (Blackboard Learn) environment on a rolling basis. That process will continue and will cover all course content through the summer 2020 (2207) term. These archive copies contain student submissions and grade records. Faculty do not need to do anything to request that these copies be created for their courses.

The University is maintaining a very limited archive version of Blackboard Learn for rendering course archive content.

While CourseWeb (Blackboard Learn) as we know it will end on December 11th, the University has engaged with Blackboard to provide a limited access system for rendering course archive content for record retention purposes. The archive copies themselves contain all student submissions and grades, however these archives exist in a proprietary format that requires a Blackboard environment to render them in the familiar fashion. Our engagement with Blackboard will allow for a small number of University administrative staff to have direct access to this system. Faculty who have a need for rendered CourseWeb (Blackboard Learn) content after December 11^th, 2020 should contact the Teaching Center's Educational Consulting team for assistance.

Faculty and students can download personal copies of their work between now and Friday December 11^th, 2020.

Once a term ends, the availability of CourseWeb (Blackboard Learn) courses and course content from previous terms has always been at the discretion of faculty. For courses where students still have access, they are encouraged to download copies of their work if they do not already have copies outside of CourseWeb (Blackboard Learn). While the University is archiving and maintaining copies of all recent CourseWeb (Blackboard Learn), faculty are encouraged to retain their own copies of the CourseWeb (Blackboard Learn) content while they still have direct access to the system. The Teaching Center has created a "Choose How to Retain Your Blackboard Data" guide to help faculty who wish to do so.