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” through
Course Mgmt System
Link to CMS support
Instructions
Mouse-Overs
Returns course to active state
Stored in backup location. Instructor may restore at any time.
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 cronlike 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