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Create Moodle Course Backup

Create and Save a Moodle Course Backup File

A Moodle course can be saved with some or all of its parts by using the Course Backup function. To ensure your content is as accessible as possible before creating your course backup, please consider your documents’ Ally scores as well as results from the Brickfield Accessibility Starter Toolkit.

To create a backup of a Moodle course:

  • login to Moodle and navigate to the course you want to backup
  • from the Administration area, under the ‘Course administration’ heading, click on “Backup”
  • at “Step 1: Initial settings > Backup settings,” carefully deselect the items you do not want to backup. If you are planning to use this course backup in Brightspace, make sure to deselect course-specific settings such as enrolled users and user role assignments.
    We recommend that you keep the following items selected:
    • Include activities and resources
    • Include blocks
    • Include files
    • Include question bank
    • Include content bank content
  • Click the “Next” button.
  • at “Step 2. Schema settings > Include,” choose which individual resources and activities you want to include in the backup. If you have a lot of course content, use the “Select All / None” option at the top to make this easier.

Please DO NOT include the following items if you are planning to use the course backup in Brightspace, as these elements will need to be recreated in the new course environment. If you are making an archival backup of the course, you can capture these items:

    • Course announcements forums
    • Attendance activities
    • Turnitin assignment activities
    • VoiceThread activities (Home Links, assignments, etc.)
    • Zoom integration Dashboard
    • Perusall activities (Library, assignments, etc.)
    • ThinkingStorm connection
  • Make your selections and click the “Next” button.
  • at “Step 3. Confirmation and review > Filename,” you can choose to edit the filename of the course backup. Note that the course backup file MUST end in .mbz in order to be restored into a Brightspace course. For this reason, we recommend not altering the filename.
  • Scroll through and review the backup settings and items to be included in the backup. If all looks correct, click on the “Perform backup” button at the bottom of the page.
  • You will see a green message indicating that “The backup file was successfully created.” Click the “Continue” button.
  • You will be brought to your Import / Backup area in Moodle. Your newly-created backup file will be listed under the “User private backup area” heading.
  • Click on the Download link associated with the new backup file to save the file locally to your own computer.