Description
Faculty are responsible for backing up their own course materials at the end of each semester. It is recommended that the gradebook and course content are both retained.
This Guide Will Help You to:
Exporting your Moodle ISU gradebook
Your Moodle ISU gradebook can be exported to a file and saved to your computer or another secure archive system. Gradebooks in Moodle are not part of the course backup process and need to be archived separately from your course.
If you are required to keep grades beyond one year as indicated in the Archive Policies, export your gradebook.
For more information see, Exporting the Gradebook to a Downloadable File [Faculty].
Backup course content
Step 1: Clean up course files.
Resources and other content that will not be used in future classes should be deleted prior to course backup. The maximum course file size that can be backed up and restored into Moodle is 16GB. If large media files such as video and pictures have been saved in the course files, an error message may appear regarding course file size. See the “Manage Courses with Media Content” section below for strategies that can reduce course file size.
Step 2: Create a backup to transfer content to another semester.
Each semester, you should create a backup of your course, for your personal archival purposes. This backup can then be used to restore content in a future term. Creating a backup for each term is helpful as each term has different holidays and the summer term is shorter.
For more information, see Backing up and Restoring a Moodle ISU Course [Faculty].
Import course content
The Import function allows course content to be moved from one course to another within the same instance of Moodle. Importing course content allows instructors to move data from one course to another within Moodle ISU; it does not create a backup file. User data (student files), manually added calendar events, and topic headings (summaries) will not be imported using this function.
For more information, see Importing Content into a New Moodle ISU Course [Faculty].
Identify end-of-term course availability procedure
Courses will be made unavailable to students one week after the end of the term. Courses are removed from the server four weeks after the start of the same term the following year. This is to give time for instructors to import content from previous terms into the current term.
For more information, see Archive Policies.
Manage courses with media content
Video and media files
Media files within your Moodle ISU course should not have a combined total that exceeds 4GB of data. Courses with more than 4GB will limit your success backing up and restoring courses.
Alternatives to uploading media materials directly into Moodle include YouTube and Google Drive, and Vimeo. These websites provide video storage and streaming as well as the ability to add captions to your videos. Videos can be locked down to only ISU members, private, shared with specific users, or public.
For assistance moving video files to YouTube, see How to Upload YouTube videos.
For assistance moving video files to Google Drive and sharing, see How to use Google Drive.
For assistance moving video files to Vimeo, see Uploading to Vimeo.
Zoom recordings
The Zoom recordings are stored on the Zoom cloud for 365 days (1 year) from the initial recording. After 1 year, these recordings are permanently deleted. If there are Zoom recordings you need to keep, you’ll need to download them from the Zoom cloud and move them to a local storage area or another media service like Google Drive, YouTube, or Vimeo.
For more information, see Archive Policy Zoom Cloud Storage.
Narrated PowerPoint presentations
Your narrated presentations should be backed up and stored on your computer and/or on an external storage device. This will help prevent you from losing your presentations and having to create them again.
Recognize the course evaluations procedures
Department Administrative Assistants can support instructors with end-of-semester course evaluations in Moodle ISU.
See the Course Evaluations page for more information on this process or contact your department chair.
Seek Further Assistance
For additional assistance please contact, ITRC at (208) 282 5880 or itrc@isu.edu.
This work was created by the Idaho State University Instructional Technology Resource Center and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.