Beware of Deleting Your Attachments to an Assignment

Recently an instructor accidentally deleted an attachment from an assignment in Blackboard by clicking the little icon next to the attachment. She thought it was an ActionLink icon. That icon deletes the attachment without a confirmation box. We’ve duplicated the event. Worse, in this case the instructor did not have a copy of the file anywhere else. She assumed a copy was put into her Class Files area (accessible using the File Manager), but that is not the case (We confirmed that as well).

We’ve requested that assignment attachments be placed automatically in the Class Files area and that a warning with an exit option appear before the attachment is permanently deleted. Blackboard considers this a “feature enhancement” so we’ll need to wait on a future release, if they decide to include these changes. In the meantime, be forewarned! Keep a backup of all attachments you use in assignments.

Backing Up and Deleting Courses

In case you’re wondering about standard operating procedure regarding when courses are deleted off the JCCC Blackboard CE server:

1. Production “credit” course shells will be removed from the server about 1 month into the next subsequent semester, however, spring courses will not be removed until 1 month into the following fall semester.
2. Each semester the academic director of the Educational Technology Center will alert faculty members about 2 weeks into the semester that courses will be deleted unless they request otherwise, e.g. to accommodate contract incomplete grades, self-paced courses, etc.
3. Self-paced courses (950 sections) are the exception, they’ll stay online for a full year and a month after the start date, and then they’ll be removed.
4. Before any course is removed a backup will be made by Academic Computing Services and stored. If backups are needed in the future, IS will retrieve the backups as needed.
5. As an added precaution, faculty members are encouraged to backup their own courses after the end of each semester or after they make any significant changes to the course (e.g. add an epack, add a new module, make a significant revision, and so on). The backup made by faculty members should not be stored only in the course shell, but should be downloaded to the instructor’s workstation and then copied to media such as a CD or DVD. The instructor’s Ed Tech Center Designer can assist you with this process if needed.
6. “Z - Dev courses” (those used for course development, will not be automatically deleted. Faculty members should periodically review their list of “Z – Dev Courses” (to determine if the development course shell is still needed) and when appropriate, request that the course data be backed up and deleted.

If the instructor needs a refresher on how to create a course Backup, there’s a Flash movie and PDF printout covering the process available at http://web.jccc.edu/edtech/notes/get.asp?DocumentID=177.

Instructors should be aware that the way to download the backup file to your computer is a little circuitous, but not hard.

1. Once the Status of the backup is "Complete", you use the ActionLinks next to the name of the Backup file and choose "Save as File."
2. Unfortunately, the only choices for where to put the file are My Files or Class Files (My Computer is not an option). We recommend choosing My Files.
3. After saving the file (make a note of the filename), go back to the My Blackboard screen and click on the Content Manager tab - this accesses the My Files area.
4. Find the backup (by filename), and use the ActionLinks to choose Download.
5. You can now choose a location on your computer to save the file.

If you need assisance creating a CD or DVD copy of the backup file, please contact your Ed Tech Center Designer.