USC Blackboard Policy: Student access to old courses is being removed

One of the things I really liked about Blackboard was the fact that course materials from old courses were still available there. Unfortunately, this is being removed on September 1, 2008.

Unavailable Courses

A new policy has been instated by ITS Blackboard Administration and the Blackboard Advisory Committee that courses should only be available to students during the semester those courses are in session. There will be a one semester grace period in which courses that recently ended will still be available to students.

Which Courses are affected?
By default, all courses are affected by this policy. On September 1, 2008, all courses that started previous to the beginning of the Summer 2008 semester (code 20081 and older) will be made unavailable to students. Near the start of the Spring 2009 semester, the Summer 2008 (20082) semester will be made unavailable to students. This will continue perpetually such that only the current semester and the previous semester of courses will be available to students.

For Students
Please backup any data you may want from previous semesters before September 1, 2008. Any files, discussion posts, messages, assignment submissions, or grade information pertinent to an old course will be inaccessible to you when the course is made unavailable to students. You may look up course grades on OASIS.

For Instructors
This change does not affect instructors’ nor TA’s ability to access these courses, view and modify their data, nor copy content to newer courses. It only affects the ability for students to see these courses and their material. Furthermore, the availability flag will be automatically changed once per semester, and instructors may at their discretion make their course available to students after it this automated process occurs. This policy does not affect the long standing policy that courses older than 2 years will be completely deleted from the system.

If you wish to reinstate student access to your course, you may login to Blackboard, go into your course, go into the Control Panel, Settings, Course Availability, then set Make Course Available to “Yes” and click Submit. If you wish to make your course unavailable to students, you may set this same setting to “No”.

Questions/Comments
For questions about this policy, please email us at [email protected]

What do you think?