ITS recommends instructors do their own backups of their courses during the semester and store the backup files outside of Moodle. A backup file saved outside of Moodle can serve as your personal record of your course's online resources, and may be used to transfer your course to another school using a compatible version of Moodle. ITS does not keep courses in Moodle indefinitely, and suggest instructors wishing to have long term access to courses create and store their own course backups.
The Course Retention Policy can be found at https://www.brandeis.edu/its/policies/course-retention.html
It is recommended that you perform a backup of your course for the following:
After you have done a lot of work prepping your course for the semester
At the end of the semester, to save all student work and activities
If you'd like to share the setup of your course shell with another Brandeis instructor who doesn't have access to your course shell.
Whenever you want extra peace-of-mind
Course Editor and Grader roles are unable to access these functions.
IMPORTANT: The Import and Backup/Restore steps can only be completed in Moodle by the Instructor and Academic Administrator Roles. The Course Editor role can personalize the course shell after the import or restore process is complete.
Important: To create course backups and restore materials from one course to another, you must have Instructor status in both courses.
1. Open your previous course that you would like to duplicate. Select Backup in the Administration block.
2. Keep all defaults and select Jump to final step.
3. Select continue. Your new backup file will appear in the User private backup area, which stores your backup file in LATTE.
4. Select the link to Download the backup file onto your computer.
5. Open a new tab and login to Brandeis Box.
6. Find the location where you would like to add the Backup File. You cannot add this file to the LATTE backup folder created by ITS. Instead, we recommend creating a new folder with an easily identifiable and memorable name for your personal LATTE backup files.
7. Select New and then select File Upload from the dropdown menu.
8. Find the file you want to upload. An easy to find this is to select the download folder and sort by last modified.
Select the course backup file that you downloaded and select open.
9. In Box you will see a message confirming that the file has uploaded.
Important: To create course backups and restore materials from one course to another, you must have Instructor status in both courses.
1. Open the course that you would like to backup. Select the More tab and then select Course Reuse.
2. Change the Import dropdown menu to Backup.
3. Keep all defaults and select Jump to final step.
4. Select continue. Your new backup file will appear in the User private backup area, which stores your backup file in Moodle.
5. Select the link to Download the backup file onto your computer.
You cannot add this file to the LATTE backup folder created by ITS. Instead, we recommend creating a new folder with an easily identifiable and memorable name for your personal Moodle backup files.
1. Open a new tab and login to Brandeis Box.
2. Select New +. Then select Folder from the drop down menu.
3. Enter a name for the folder and select Create.
4. Select the link to open the Folder you created in Step 3.
7. Select New and then select File Upload from the dropdown menu.
8. Find the file you want to upload. An easy to find this is to select the download folder and sort by last modified.
Select the course backup file that you downloaded and select open.
9. In Box you will see a message confirming that the file has uploaded.
1. Open your new course. From the course header, select the More option and select Course Reuse from the dropdown menu.
2. On the dropdown menu on the left side of the screen, select Restore.
3. To restore a course backup file select Choose a File. From the File picker select Box.
4. Use your Brandeis credentials to log into Box. Grant access to Brandeis Box.
5. Select the course backup, and confirm by clicking Select this file.
6. Select Restore.
7. On the next page, Confirm, scroll to the bottom of the page, and select Continue.
8. On the next page, Destination, you can choose one of several options for restoring the backup data into your course. The most common option is Restore into this course → Merge the backup course into this course. Click Continue in your desired section.
9. On the next page, Settings, scroll to the bottom and select continue.
a. Optional: The Schema page allows you the opportunity to uncheck and remove any specific items from being imported (if desired). Click Next.
10. The next page, Review, gives you one last opportunity to review the content that is being restored into the course. If you need to make changes select the Previous button at the bottom. Select the button Perform Restore to begin the restore process.
When the restore is complete, a green banner will appear, confirming that everything was restored properly. Click Continue to return to the course page into which you restored the data backup.
The course backup was too big
The average LATTE course backup is about 45MBs in size (course content, not student data) - but during the migration process courses were discovered that exceeded several Gigabytes in size. Extremely large courses (higher than several GBs) would tax the system for so long it would time out, and the process would then move on to the next course backup in line.
Use of Reserved Characters in a course title
File system utilities and naming conventions on various systems prohibit particular characters from appearing in filenames or make them problematic. These are often referred to as “Reserved Characters,” and can be prohibited from being used as part of the name of a website url or a desktop file name. There are different types for different uses, but a common number of them are:
! # $ & ' ( ) * + , / : ; = ? @ [ ]
Since Moodle backup files confer the course title as part of the name of the backup file, those backup files resist attempts to automatically move, duplicate, or log them. Unfortunately with over 20,000 backup files to process, pre-emptive human troubleshooting of such errors is unavailable.
The individual expecting the backup file did not have a Primary Instructor, Secondary Instructor, or Instructor course role in the particular LATTE course.
If an individual was added to a course as a Grading TA, Academic Administrator, Guest, etc, they will not receive a backup file of the course as part of the automated migration, regardless of their actual participation in the class. This individual should reach out to the other participants in the course with Instructor-level access permissions to access a course backup file.
If a past LATTE course is exceedingly large, it is recommended that an instructor remove the large files (often these are direct video embeds into the course). Then it is a matter of the instructor downloading the course locally onto their computer and then uploading the backup file into BOX. Please contact help@brandeis.edu with any questions or challenges with this process.
Due to University Policy, providing the course backup or materials to another instructor's course is not a service action that can be resolved via a support ticket request. Please reach out to the original instructor and ask them to provide a full or partial backup of their course, then follow the steps outlined in this guide. To learn more about University Policy regarding requesting access to digital content, please refer to the following page: https://www.brandeis.edu/its/policies/digital-content.html.
