Blackboard Data Retention Initiative (Version 20.12.2)

Usage in Blackboard continues to grow as more and more faculty are leveraging the LMS/Blackboard platform. The growth in Blackboard usage has spiked an increase in data storage and in response, Humber College will be initiating their annual Blackboard Data Retention Initiative. This initiative is sponsored and supported by ITS, AOC and the Teaching & Learning support services.

Who will be impacted?

  • All faculty and administrators who have courses in Blackboard, pre-Fall 2018, will be impacted.

Which Blackboard courses will be archived and deleted?

  • All Banner generated courses, courses that have an assigned CRN number, including XL/cross listed courses, from Fall 2017 to Summer 2018 inclusive will be archived and then fully deleted from Blackboard.
  • .DEV, _DEV, SBX, TUTR, Master/MSTR and other specially requested Blackboard courses will not be archived nor deleted. Faculty can contact naveed.aqeel@humber.ca if they have questions regarding which courses will be impacted.
  • Faculty will continue to have access to their courses tied to the following academic years – 2018/2019, 2019/2020.

When will courses be archived and deleted?

  • The archiving process will commence immediately. There will be no impact to Blackboard courses or Blackboard services during the archiving process.
  • The deletion of Blackboard course data (Fall 2017 – Summer 2018 courses) will begin the weekend of January 30/31, 2021.
  • The process of archiving and deleting data from Blackboard will be carried out annually as per the retention policy and after the close out of each academic year.

Faculty considerations and responsibilities:

  • Faculty should export/archive any courses older than Fall 2018 that they wish to keep offline. This task should be ideally completed by January 29, 2021.
  • Help documentation on how to export/archive a course can be found here.
  • Exported/archived courses should be saved either offline on a USB or uploaded to a cloud storage solution such as Microsoft OneDrive.
  • Faculty one-on-one support is available through the Instructional Support Studios.
  • Additional communication reminders (Communiqué announcements, social media posts, websites) reminding faculty of this initiative will be ongoing up until/including the January 30/31 deletion weekend.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the Blackboard Data Retention Initiative, please contact mark.ihnat@humber.ca or ryan.burton@humber.ca. Thank you.