EleUM in Archive mode

Because we have been using Blackboard – at Maastricht University referred to as EleUM – for many years, students and staff who worked in EleUM need access to courses and organisations from previous years. That is why we want to keep EleUM accessible.

Why is accessibility important? 

Teachers mostly need access to EleUM because they want to import content into this year’s Canvas courses. Students on the other hand have a legal right to retain access to completed courses for three years. Therefore, we have a contract with the Blackboard Supplier to have all courses and organisations accessible. The URL will stay the same: https://eleum.maastrichtuniversity.nl.

Accessing your Blackboard Archive

Using the ‘old’ URL will automatically lead to your Blackboard Archive. You will see a big red warning telling you EleUM is now an Archive only system:

Lesser modules and prevent active use

If you login to EleUM, you will notice most modules on the home page have disappeared. The only modules still available are Courses, Organisations and Tutorials. This means that you can access old courses to see or download content material, but no changes are allowed.

Although still available and active, Blackboard interactive tools should not be used. Sending announcements or starting discussion threads seem to work initially, but as soon as more than 10 users login and start interacting, there will be server failure. And important to know: we cannot guarantee support!

Other changes

The integration of materials to courses from previous years has been simplified in the Student Portal. Announcements, Assignment deadlines and deep links to Course Details are no longer available for EleUM courses. Links offered in the Student Portal will instead direct to the Blackboard Archive personal home page, where the student can choose the course from a list.

With this Blackboard Archive we feel that we are offering a good service to students and staff. Although we expect no real activity (interaction) in past courses, we can understand you will sometimes be tempted to use these tools; habits are difficult to change … We hope you will understand that we offer limited support concerning system failures in Blackboard/EleUM due to making use of interactive tools. Our focus now is on offering you all the support you need in Canvas.

Author: Hans Maessen, member of Canvas Support Team

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.

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