With the full implementation of paskwâwi-mostos mêskanâs starting Fall 2022, the decommissioning process for Blackboard Learn begins. The process of decommissioning includes the following stages.

Student access ends October 24, 2022

The only student access supported beyond September 1, 2022 is to support those courses that started in Spring/Summer 2022 with a slightly different run time. As a result, all student access to Blackboard will be removed starting October 24, 2022.

Course enrolment synchronization with PeopleSoft will also be disabled at this time. Faculty can still access and review student data and work beyond October 24, but students can no longer access Blackboard Learn from this time on. Any extended timelines granted to students on an individual basis must be accommodated outside of Blackboard Learn.

Faculty access ends December 31, 2022

For the duration of the Fall 2022 term, faculty can still access all their course content, student rosters and gradebooks in Blackboard. It does allow retrieval of content, including individual files, grade exports and other data. Faculty can use this period to retrieve materials for building their courses in paskwâwi-mostos mêskanâs, if they haven’t already done so.

It is recommended that faculty save all their files from their Content Collection in Blackboard. Please note that Blackboard Learn full-course backups use a proprietary format that is not usable without Blackboard software, so keeping full-course backups has extremely limited value.

Blackboard fully decommissioned April 30, 2023

During the Winter 2023 term, only administrative staff will be able to access Blackboard. A request process will be in place for faculty to request, incidentally, last-minute retrieval of content and data that was missed earlier.

On April 30, 2023, all Blackboard Learn servers at MacEwan University will be turned off and all underlying databases will be destroyed. Please contact dle@macewan.ca if you have any questions.

From the Centre for Teaching and Learning