It is UMass Online policy that at the end of each semester all courses are removed from the myCourses server. Consequently, UMassOnline has asked all five campuses to comply with this request to enable the server the necessary operating space to perform at optimum capacity and speed. To conform with this system-wide requirement, the UMass Dartmouth myCourses administrator will remove all course sites sixty days after the last day of final exams. This is now the official myCourses End-of-Semester policy for UMass Dartmouth.
End of the Semester Procedures
All courses containing content will be archived before removing. This archive procedure retains course content files[lecture notes, etc] but removes the semester's activity (student/instructor discussion postings and assignments, as well as email messages). If you want to use the same course content files in a future semester, we will have a course template available to reload into a new course site. When course sites are archived at the end of each semester, all student information in the sites is removed. Your course site content is saved as a template for future use.
As a result, instructors should:
- Download any discussion boards for future reference (directions for archiving discussion board messages)
- Save any important email communications with students
- Download any important assignments that may be needed
- Export assessment reports (directions for exporting assessment reports)
- Export student tracking reports (directions for exporting student tracking reports)
- Export grades from the gradebook to an Excel spreadsheet (directions for exporting the gradebook)
Please pass this information along to your students, so they are aware that the course will be removed and they need to save copies of all of course materials and their course work. An announcement will be sent to all myCourses sites as a reminder.
If you have any questions about this procedure, please feel free to contact Bev Johnson at x8793.
