ARCHIVED: Following the Oncourse retirement, how can I preserve content from my project, course, and portfolio sites?

This content has been archived, and is no longer maintained by Indiana University. Information here may no longer be accurate, and links may no longer be available or reliable.

Important:

Oncourse is retired. For details, see ARCHIVED: About the Oncourse retirement.

The ARCHIVED: Canvas Migration tool can copy most instructional content to Canvas, but there is no single tool or utility for preserving instructional content in tools not supported by the Canvas Migration tool or site content created by participants (e.g., messages, forum posts, or submissions). See below for options to download or export data from specific Oncourse tools.

Note:

Oncourse gradebook data will be preserved for at least five years beyond the semester in which the course was offered. If you need access to gradebook data for a specific course to resolve a grade dispute, contact the UITS Support Center.

Important:

If you plan to export and maintain local offline copies of any student information (including but not limited to names, University ID numbers, or grades), you are responsible for taking adequate security measures to handle and safeguard such data, as it remains sensitive university data.

For more, see Protecting Data & Privacy.

For more on handling sensitive data, see:

On this page:

Announcements

Announcements has no export or download option; see below.

Assignments

Instructors: To save assignment submissions, use the Download All feature to download all assignment submissions, feedback, and grades for specific assignments. For more, see ARCHIVED: Downloading assignments for offline review. To move your assignment instructions and settings to Canvas, use the ARCHIVED: Canvas Migration tool.

Students: To download your own submissions:

Navigate to the assignment for the submission you wish to save.
If your submission is a file attachment, right-click the filename, and choose Save link as..., Save target as..., or Download linked file as..., depending on your browser. Then save the file to your desired location.
If your submission was inline text, see below.

Blogs

Blogs has no export or download option; see below.

Calendar

Calendar has no export or download option. To save content, set the calendar to the desired view, and then follow the instructions below.

Chat Room

Chat Room has no export or download option; see below.

Drop Box

Two options are available for downloading content stored in the Drop Box tool: exporting Drop Box content to a ZIP file, or using WebDAV, which lets you drag and drop files and folders between Drop Box and your local storage device.

Exporting to a ZIP file

This method is easier to use than WebDAV, but has a major drawback: when the ZIP file is extracted, the original folder names (which are named after students) are converted to globally unique identifiers, a lengthy sequence of letters and numbers. If it is important to keep the original folder names, use WebDAV instead.

To export as a ZIP file:

Log into Oncourse and navigate to the site with the Drop Box files you want to export.
Click Drop Box.
To the right of the folder you wish to export, from the Actions menu, choose Compress to ZIP Archive. To export everything in the current site, choose the top-level folder.
The ZIP file will be saved to the Drop Box tool. To download it, right-click the file and then, from the contextual menu, choose Save Link As... (or the comparable option in your browser).

Downloading via WebDAV

To download Drop Box files and folders via WebDAV, see:

Email Archive

Using the Email Archive tool's new Export feature, anyone in the site can download all of the messages and attachments stored in the Email Archive tool. An HTML index file is provided to facilitate navigation. For more, see ARCHIVED: Exporting Email Archive contents.

Forums

Forums has no export or download option. To save content, navigate to a topic or post you wish to save. If you want to save an entire topic, click Display Message Content to display all posts within the topic. Then follow the instructions below.

Gradebook

The Oncourse Gradebook includes options for exporting all student grades as well as exporting only the calculated final grades. For more, see:

Lessons

Instructors: You can move instructor-generated pages to Canvas with the ARCHIVED: Canvas Migration tool. However, it won't migrate any pages your students have created.

Everyone: To save any individual page in Lessons that you can't (or don't want to) migrate to Canvas, see below.

Matrices

There is no download or export option to preserve the content in a matrix cell or completed form within a matrix; see below. To download file attachments in a matrix cell, right-click the filename and choose Save link as..., Save target as..., or Download linked file as..., depending on your browser. Then save the file to your desired location.

Instructors: To preserve a record of evaluations in the matrix, use the Reports tool to generate and download a report; see ARCHIVED: Exporting portfolio report results.

Messages

Messages has no export or download option; to save individual messages, see below.

Modules

Instructors: Use the ARCHIVED: Canvas Migration tool to move your module content to Canvas. Then, if you want to preserve an offline copy, export your Canvas course. For information on exporting Canvas content, see How do I export a Canvas course?

Students: To save individual module pages, see below.

Podcasts

Content uploaded to the Podcasts tool is stored in a folder named Podcasts in the Resources tool. For instructions on downloading this folder, see Resources.

PostEm

Instructors: CSV files uploaded to PostEm can be downloaded to a local storage device. For instructions, see ARCHIVED: Downloading a posted file.

Presentations

To save a copy of a presentation, locate the presentation in My Workspace or the site in which it was created and follow the instructions in ARCHIVED: Exporting a presentation.

Reports

Site owners: You can export reports with performance and status results for the Oncourse Matrices tool in CSV format. For more, see ARCHIVED: Exporting portfolio report results.

Resources

To download multiple files and folders from Resources, use WebDAV, which lets you drag and drop files and folders between Resources and your local storage device.

To download files and folders via WebDAV, see:

Roster

Site owners: You can download course roster information in Microsoft Excel format. For more, see ARCHIVED: Exporting your roster.

Site Stats

Instructors: You can export the results of any report in the Oncourse Site Stats tool to Microsoft Excel, CSV, or PDF format. For instructions on creating and exporting custom reports, see ARCHIVED: Using the Site Stats tool.

To export any of the reports on the "Overview" page:

Log into Oncourse and navigate to the site with the Site Stats data you want to export.
Click Site Stats.
On the "Overview" page, click the link for the metric you want to export (e.g., Visits, Most Active Tool, Files Opened). The report for that metric will display.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Export.
Click to select the desired export format and save the file to your local storage device.

Syllabus

Options for saving the syllabus depend on how it was posted:

As a file: If the syllabus was uploaded as a file (e.g., a Word document), right-click the filename, and choose Save link as..., Save target as..., or Download linked file as..., depending on your browser. Then save the file to your desired location.
Authored in Oncourse: If the syllabus was entered directly into the rich-text editor, see below.

Tests & Surveys

Instructors: To export individual assessments to QTI IMS content package format, see ARCHIVED: Exporting assessments. You can also use the ARCHIVED: Canvas Migration tool to move all assessments in a course to Canvas.

You can download student scores, student responses, and the item analysis for any published assessment in Microsoft Excel format. To initiate the export:

Log into Oncourse and navigate to the site with the assessment results you want to export.
Click Tests & Surveys.
In the "Published Assessments" region of the page, locate the assessment you wish to export.
From the Action drop-down menu on the left, select Export Scores/Responses. You will be directed to the "Export" screen for the selected assessment.
Under "Export Response", click Export. You'll be prompted to open or save the export file.
Save the file to your local storage device.

Wiki

Wiki has no export or download option; to save individual wiki pages, see below.

Preserving content in tools without export or download options

Some tools in Oncourse do not have an export or download option. If you want to keep content from those tools, you'll need to save it, one page at a time, using one of the following methods.

Copy and paste: You can copy and paste each individual posting, message, etc. that you want to keep into a program such as Microsoft Word. One advantage to this method is that you can paste all related content into a single document.
Print to PDF: Some Oncourse tools have a built-in print function (see ARCHIVED: In Oncourse, which tools have printable views?); for those that don't, use your browser's print function to print to a file in PDF format instead of a printer.
Using Firefox, you can print only the content you need, without the site menubar and Oncourse header. To do so:
1. Navigate to the content you wish to save, and right-click within the body (e.g., if you're saving a message, right-click in the text of the message).
2. Select This Frame, and then Print Frame....
3. Windows: From the Name drop-down menu, select Adobe PDF.
  OS X: From the PDF pull-down menu, select Save as PDF.
4. Choose your desired storage location, and click Save.