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Tutorial – Backing Up a Course

  
     
 

Schools have different approaches for backing up their WebCT servers.  Practices may range from no backup policy whatsoever to backups collected on a regular basis.  Any individual who is teaching a class using WebCT should know the backup policy for the WebCT server he or she is using.  You should find out from your WebCT support group just what the backup policy is at your school.

WNMU users only

At WNMU, the following backup policy is in place:


WNMU Backup Policy
For the WebCT server

WebCT courses are backed up daily in the early morning hours.

A backup is good for about 24 hours.  After that, it is overwritten over by the next day’s backup.

 

What does this policy mean to you?  It means that if you do something in your course that you wish you hadn’t, as in deleting some grades, deleting students, resetting quiz attempts, etc, and let the WNMU WebCT support group know that day, your course can probably be restored to its status from the previous day.  If you do not let the WebCT support group know immediately, by the next day the window of opportunity for restoring your course to its previous state is gone.

This means that if you are going to do anything risky with your course, make your own backup before you start.  It only takes a few seconds.  It’s also a good idea to back your course up periodically throughout the semester – we recommend weekly!

And at the end of a semester, after final grades are in and before you reset the course, you should ALWAYS make a backup, download it to a local computer and archive it there or on a CD.  When you have the course archived, all you need to do is request a shell course be created, upload the backup into it, and restore it. The workouts below show you how to back up a course and download the copy to a local machine. 

You as the designer have to guard the records in your course as carefully as you have always guarded your paper grade books.  This means a regular, consistent backup policy.

Backing up and archiving a course on a local computer

The workouts below take you through backing up a course and downloading it for archiving.  Five backups for each course are allowed on the WebCT server. 

Whether you are limited in the number of backups or not, be vigilant about weeding out outdated backups.  As they accumulate, they bloat both your course and the WebCT server. Keep only what you truly need and delete those backups that have been replaced by more recent ones.

 

Workout:  Back up a course

A. Back up the course

1.     From the Homepage, click the Control Panel button.

2.     At the Control Panel screen (expanded view), go to the Manage Course column and click the Backup course link.

3.     At the Backup Course screen, In the Actions menu, click the Create backup button.

4.     At the Backup Course screen, enter a short description of the file. (Optional, but essential to enter something so that you will remember why this particular backup was created).  Then click Create.

5.     The file will be created.  It may take a while, depending on the size of the course.  Leave the keyboard alone and let WebCT make the backup uninterrupted! 

6.     When the backup is complete, a Success message appears giving the file name.  Click Continue.

7.     The Backup Courses screen appears and shows the file that was created. 

B. Download the file to a local computer.

8.     Although backups can be stored in your WebCT course, you should also download a copy of the backup file and archive it on a local computer.

9.     Still at the Backup Course screen, click the radio button next to the file name.

10.               In the Actions menu, click the Download button.

11.               Download the file to your local computer.

12.               Return to the Homepage

Reliability of backups

In a perfect world, every backup would be perfect and every attempt to restore a backup into a course would be successful 100% of the time.

Unfortunately, this is not the case, for a backup can be corrupted in a number of ways.  If it is interrupted during the time WebCT is making it, the interruption can corrupt the backup (and possibly the course itself!).  This is why we caution you to leave your computer completely alone during the few seconds it takes to make a backup.  In addition, a good backup can be damaged during the download, especially if it is downloaded over telephone lines.  You will have a much greater chance of keeping the backup intact if you always download the copy over a fast connection.

There’s no way of knowing whether a backup is good unless you upload it into a test course and restore it.  If it restores successfully, it’s passed the test.  You’ll learn about restores in a later chapter.