Backing up your course is a way to keep personal records, or save the structure of your course for later use. This documentation will walk you through how to create a manual backup of your course, which can be downloaded to your computer.
As outlined in the Moodle Data Retention Policy:
- Instructors have the ability to create a backup of their courses at any time in the Course Reuse area.
- These backups are for personal records.
- These backups should be downloaded by the instructor as soon as possible, and then deleted from the LMS (Moodle).
- These backups should not reside permanently on the LMS (Moodle) due to their effect on space and performance. TLT encourages you to also save a secure copy of your academic course onto OneDrive. Personal backups older than ten (10) days will be removed upon discovery by LMS (Moodle) administrators.
For information beyond this article, please visit Moodle documentation here.
1. Navigate to the course you would like to backup. Click on the drop-down menu "More", and select "Course reuse".
2. There is a drop-down menu at the left of the page, which defaults to "Import". Click on this menu and select "Backup".
3. You will be transferred to Backup settings. One of the most important settings is “Include enrolled users”, detailed below. Leave all other settings as they were for a default backup and click “Next” at the bottom of the page when you are ready.
- If “Include enrolled users” is checked: Your backup will include all user data. This includes enrolled users, forum posts, quiz data, grades. The purpose of including enrolled user data would be to have it for your personal records, and is not suitable for later use in a blank shell.
- If “Include enrolled users” is not checked: Your backup will not contain any user data. This setting may be used if you would like to save the structure and settings of the course for later use in a blank shell. Doing so will be functionally the same as performing a course import.
4. Schema settings will allow you to select which content you would like to import into your course. If you would like to keep all of the content from your course in the backup, leave all of the boxes checked and click "Next" at the bottom of the page.
- If you would like to keep all of the content from your course in the backup, leave all of the boxes checked and click "Next" at the bottom of the page.
- If you would only like to keep some of your content, use the "All/None" buttons to make this process easier.
5. Confirmation and Review will allow you to name your backup file and confirm the settings and content you would like to include. Click "Perform backup" at the bottom of the page when you are ready.
6. Your course will begin backing up.
- The backup progress is shown from the loading bar. If your course contains a lot of data, the backup may take a few minutes.
- You do not have to remain on this page while your backup proceeds. All backups can be found in the Course Backups Area
7. Complete backups will appear in the "Course backup area". To view these backups, follow the same actions from Step 1, and then select "Restore" from the drop-down menu.
8. Scroll down to the section labelled "Course backup area". To download a backup, locate the file you would like to download and click "Download" from the column at the right-hand side of the section.
- Your backups will be sorted by the time they were created. The most recent one will be listed on top.
- You now have a backup of your Moodle course. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Technology Service Desk at (336) 278 5200.
