CourseLife: An Archival Solution

Kelly Roark, Northwestern University

Patricia Goldweic, Northwestern University

Brian Nielsen, Northwestern University

Team Members

• Blackboard Support Group– James Altman (Manager, Faculty Support)– Kelly Roark (Faculty Support Specialist)– Brian Nielsen (Project Manager, Faculty Initiatives)

• Development– Patricia Goldweic (Sr. Software Developer)– Jonathan Smith (Software Architect)

Why CourseLife?

• No formal policy for a long time re: archiving courses

• 8 years accumulation of course sites!

• Instructors UP IN ARMS about long lists of "old" course sites.

Before the tool...

• Manual process time consuming• Requirements doc created in FSS

in conjunction with the policy• Production server full of "old"

courses

Writing your policy

• Think far into the future. • To provide records, what may you need to restore?

 • Who is the decision-maker for archiving and restoring?

 • How long will courses be kept online?

 • How much time will they have to exempt from archive?

 • Make the policy public.

Northwestern’s Policy

• If the instructor does nothing, course sites older than two years will automatically be archived.

• Instructors will have the option to “Archive” courses or “Exempt from Archive".

• Instructors will have the option to “Restore” archived courses.

Explaining the tool

• Instructors receive quarterly email reminders/instructions.

• Brief, thorough instructions on the tool.

• Mouse-over definitions.• Link to expansive instructions and

definitions on Support Site.

Example Quarterly Reminder

Dear Instructor,

At the end of the quarter, courses which are older than two years old will be automatically archived, in accordance with our CourseLife Policy www.it.northwestern.edu/policies/courselife.html. ...

How it works

Instructors access “CourseLife” throughCourse Mgmt System

Instructions

Stored in backup location. Instructor may restore at any time.

Link to CMS support

Returns course to active state

Mouse-Overs

No action required for archival!

Time Line

• April 20th, 2009, tool went to production

• Courses were “marked for archive”

• May 4th - courses began to be archived (first batch was a big one - over 20,000!)

• Courses archived ever since at the end of each quarter.

CourseLife’s Advantages

• Empowers faculty to make decisions about their courses 

 • Simplicity of rules backed by administration

 • Software supports all of the activities associated with

archiving, restoring and exemption of courses. • Integrated set of tools (for admins & instructors).

Administrator Tools

• Batch ‘Marking’ tool• Batch ‘Archiving’ tool• Batch ‘Delete’ tool (not used at NU)• Batch tasks can also be scheduled in a cron-

like fashion through configuration panel

CourseLife Configuration

CourseLife General Parameters

Configure Valid Data Sources

Configure Automated Jobs

Administrator Tools

Administrator Tools

Administrator Tools

Course Lifecycle

CourseLife Architecture

CourseLife Data Model

How to adopt CourseLife in your institution

• Currently requires Oracle database– We hope others will contribute other db-specific

versions (not much work involved), or work towards a more general version.

• Set up database (separate tablespace) by running sql script.

• Install building block as usual.• Configure via administration panel.• Enable ‘user/system’ instructor tool.

How to find CourseLife

• The project site is at Oscelot: projects.oscelot.org/gf/project/courselife

• Limited support available from Northwestern– Use project site’s forums for help & discussion– May evolve into community effort if volunteers

join to help organize

Please provide feedback for this session by emailing DevConFeedback@blackboard.com. 

The title of this session is:

CourseLife: An Archival Solution

Author contacts:

roark@northwestern.edu, pgoldweic@northwestern.edu