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Blackboard Retirement

µÛÍõ»áËù will retire in June 2026 as the final stage of the Canvas Learning Management System Implementation. Blackboard course access will be reduced and eventually eliminated in a phased approach to support an optimal student and instructor experience. This page includes resources to help instructors, students, and Blackboard organization leaders manage course and organization content before access to Blackboard ends.  &²Ô²ú²õ±è;

Goals

The Blackboard Retirement effort has been designed to:

  • Support an optimal student experience through the transition to Canvas
  • Prepare faculty to retain critical records prior to Blackboard shutdown  
  • Reduce high Blackboard storage costs by removing content as quickly as possible
  • Retain the most recent portion of academic records to support student and faculty needs 

Timeline

DatesMilestone
Spring 2025Majority of OHIO courses are taught in Canvas
Summer 2025Blackboard content archiving begins
Summer/Fall 2025Limited instruction in Blackboard (permission required)
Fall 2025Last OHIO courses taught in Blackboard
Spring 2026Deadline to save Blackboard content
June 2026All Blackboard content deleted
June 2028All archived Blackboard content deleted
 

Students

Students should download any desired materials, such as readings, videos, slide decks, or submitted assignments, immediately. Instructors may limit course access after the end of a term. Courses may also be inaccessible due to the University's . 

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Instructors & Blackboard organization leaders

Instructors and Blackboard organization leaders should review all Blackboard content to determine the need to Save, Migrate, or Delete content.

  • You can save your content by downloading it and storing it in a secure location, such as OneDrive or an external hard drive. This ensures that you have access to important information even after the Blackboard is retired.

  • When migrating content, focus on transferring only the most relevant and high-quality materials that you anticipate using in Canvas. This helps maintain a clean and organized course structure in the new LMS.

  • Review your content and identify materials that are no longer needed. Deleting unnecessary content helps you keep track of what has been reviewed and ensures efficient use of resources.

Content Retention and Archiving

There are two types of content within Blackboard: Academic courses and Non-Academic content. Decisions on how to handle course materials are specific to the content type (academic or non-academic) and your role. 

  • Academic courses are for-credit courses that are automatically created in Blackboard based on the data from our student information system (PeopleSoft).
  • Non-academic content includes manually created courses, test courses, and organizations that are not managed by the student information system and are not taken for credit. 

 

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Academic Courses

Starting Summer 2025, OIT will leverage an external archiving service to maintain access to eligible courses. Archived content will be permanently deleted in June 2028. See for additional details.

Note: Beginning in June 2025 all previously archived courses will be briefly visible again while they are being migrated to an external archiving product. After migration to the external archiving product, courses will be deleted from Blackboard.

Non-academic content

Non-academic content will be permanently deleted during the Blackboard retirement process. Therefore, organization leaders and owners of manually created courses must save this content on their own if they wish to retain it. 

Blackboard Retirement FAQs

What does the archiving process entail?

Beginning June 2025, we will be re-enabling the academic courses that are archived within Blackboard.  This will allow us to transfer the data to an external archiving platform. The archiving product will support the restoration of academic records as needed, with the support of a Canvas administrator from OIT. OIT will maintain the archiving product from June 2025 through June 2028 to support the transitional retention of critical academic records for two years after Blackboard is retired.

OIT will conduct the archiving process one semester at a time, beginning with the oldest courses (Summer 2018-19).

Note: While we prepare these courses for the move to the archiving application, they will be visible to you inside of Blackboard for approximately 4-6 weeks. Your Panopto content linked to these courses will also be visible during this period. If you have any last content you wish to retain from these courses, this is a great time to do so.

Once we have confirmed that everything has been properly copied to the new archiving application, we will permanently delete the courses from Blackboard.  We will then repeat the process for the next semester’s courses.  The full archiving process will take approximately one year to complete. 

What Is the timeline for deleting non-academic courses and organizations?

All non-academic content will be deleted from Blackboard on or before June 2026.  The exact timeline is to be determined.  The process of restoring archived courses within Blackboard, so that they can be moved to our archiving application will cause an increase in the amount of storage we need within Blackboard, of which we have a finite amount of storage available.  We will not know how our storage is impacted until we begin the initial restoration process in June 2025.  At which time we will be better able to communicate the anticipated timeline for the deletion of non-academic content. 

Why is OIT encouraging people to delete content from Blackboard?

Blackboard bills the University for additional storage space, which has increased over the length of the Blackboard contract. The archiving process will increase the volume of content in Blackboard as old courses are restored prior to moving to the archiving product. OIT aims to delete as much unnecessary content as possible leading up to archiving work to manage the already high cost of Blackboard storage. 

How can I help free up storage space?

Review your content and identify materials that are no longer needed. Deleting unnecessary content helps you keep track of what has been reviewed and ensures efficient use of resources.  

Delete -  &²Ô²ú²õ±è;

How does Blackboard retirement impact current Blackboard operations?

Summer 2024, we stopped creating new non-academic courses and organizations within Blackboard.

Beginning Summer 2025, we will no longer be automatically creating academic courses within Blackboard.  Instructors will require permission from your college to teach within Blackboard. 
 
Summer 2025, we will stop adding additional enrollments to non-academic courses and organizations within Blackboard.

Fall 2025, will be the last semester any academic courses may be taught in Blackboard, and that can only happen with the permission of your college. 
 
Spring 2026, Blackboard will only be available for archiving purposes.

June 30, 2026. Blackboard is no longer available to anyone at µÛÍõ»áËù. 

Resources and Support

OIT is here to support you. Check out additional resources on OHIO's Blackboard retirement and the related Canvas transition.