With the coming project converting your courses to the Ultra course view, a cleanup in advance will also simplify that conversion process.

If courses exceed 1GB size, they can cause errors when archived or copied forward. We have also found that silent copying errors (where some content does not come across, but the logs show a successful copy) happen more frequently in larger courses. It is also easier for you as the faculty member to determine which version of a syllabus or other file to attach if you remove old versions from the content collection of your current course.

Course Content Collection Cleanup Process

• Go to the Course Management area of your course menu. Select Content, and click on the first item which will be your full course ID (ex. NDSU1-2430-BIOL410-12345).
• This brings up all the content of your course. Navigate over to the column entitled Accessibility. Items with a gas gauge or speedometer looking icon under the Accessibility column are linked/being used in the course and should NOT be deleted.
  
  
  
  
• To double check that an individual item is not active in the course, open the Options Menu drop-down to access 360° View.
  
  
  
  
• A new tab will open that will take you to the 360° View of the content. Scroll down the page until you see the Links section. If something is listed under this section, it is actively being used in the course. If nothing is listed, it is not currently active in the course.
• Be sure that you are viewing the accessibility column at an individual file level (per file). Any files that do not have the accessibility icon or do not have something listed under Links in the 360° View may be deleted to help clean up the content in the course. Files that are not in use can be moved to the Recycle Bin.
• If your course is using YuJa videos, embedded web pages, or interactive simulations check the 360 view. Some content of those types might not correctly reflect being used in the course.
• If you have video or audio media files attached as files directly into your course from the content collection rather than using YouTube or NDSU’s YuJa streaming service, check out our YuJa knowledge base page to help with moving the media files into YuJa. Doing so will both free up cloud storage space in Blackboard and get that media into a state easier for students to access and use.
• Course archival policy, Blackboard courses are available on production for a one year plus 1 semester and then archived and stored offline for another five years according to our LMS Archive and Retention Process.
• If you would like to back up your own courses, please complete either of the following steps. Go to Course Management in your course > Packages and Utilities > Export or Archive. Follow the steps to Export (course content only) or Archive (entire course with student activity submissions). Be sure to download the archive file you create within 30 days, after which Blackboard automatically deletes the files (again, to reduce cloud storage costs) Export and Archive Courses