Learning Management System Guidelines

Rhode Island College values the significance of a consistent and stable learning management system in facilitating teaching and learning beyond the traditional, face-to-face classroom setting.

Purpose of the Guidelines

The purpose of these Learning Management System Guidelines is to outline Rhode Island College’s requirements for use of the current Rhode Island College official enterprise learning management system (LMS) (Blackboard), student information system (SIS), and related academic technology applications. The SIS is the official system used by the Registrar’s Office to store, track, and maintain records of academic courses, instructors of record, student enrollments, grades, and student data. The LMS is the official system instructors use to deliver content, assignments, and other course materials to students. All enrollments and course information for academic courses are created in the SIS and sent to the LMS automatically.

This procedure applies to all users of the LMS, SIS, and related applications, including administrators, instructors, teaching assistants, graders, instructional technologists, students, and all Rhode Island College community members who have a MY RIC account. It covers access to the LMS for participating in, developing, implementing, administering, and supporting on-campus and online learning practices.

In addition to these LMS guidelines, the LMS, SIS, and related technology applications are subject to all applicable Rhode Island College procedures.

LMS Guidelines

RIC Users

All Rhode Island College members with a MY RIC account, including faculty, staff, and students, have access to the LMS if needed for official college purposes. Users can log into the LMS by visiting blackboard.ric.edu.

SIS Academic Courses

All active academic classes in the SIS have empty course templates automatically created in the LMS before the start of the semester or once the class is created in the SIS. All instructors of record and teaching assistants listed in the SIS automatically have access to their courses. Students listed in the SIS are automatically enrolled in the LMS, but they do not have access to the course until four days before the course start date.

Non-Academic Courses

All non-academic courses use Organizations within the LMS. Inactive organizations are subject to the course retention requirements listed below.

Submit a Non-Academic Course Request

Departments & Registered Student Organizations

Departments and registered student organizations may request a non-academic organization in the LMS to communicate and share content with department and RSO members. Organizations are subject to the course retention guidelines listed below.

Submit a Non-Academic Course Request

Course Templates

Department chairs, deans, and instructional designers may request an organization to create templates for new academic course development.

Faculty who cultivate an online presence for their course(s) in any modality (online, hybrid, in-person) utilize RIC's LMS (Blackboard) and other RIC-supported instructional technology because:

use of a common LMS allows students to focus their time and attention on learning course material rather than deciphering different LMS platforms
the RIC-supported technology meets FERPA requirements, and
technology support for both faculty and students is provided by the RIC Center for Instructional Technology staff.

Data and content stored within the LMS will be limited to optimize its performance, operate within product licensing limits, and align with Rhode Island College academic procedures.

Course Retention

The LMS is not an official repository for permanent storage of course materials. Instructors should save all course materials to their computer or RIC-supported file storage solution at the end of each semester.

Course materials, including full course content, grades, and all student work, will be retained in the LMS for 18 months following the assignment of final grades for all coursework.

Courses older than 18 months will be permanently deleted from the LMS. Before course deletion, instructors and deans will be notified each semester of the courses scheduled for deletion. Instructors are responsible for exporting or archiving course materials and student work that must be kept for accreditation purposes beyond 18 months.

LMS academic courses that have been stored as archives (once they have been removed from the LMS after 18 months) by the CIT will be permanently deleted after seven years following the end of the semester in which they are taught (for example, a course taught in fall 2017 would be deleted at the end of December 2024).

In exceptional circumstances, an instructor can request an archived course be restored to the LMS. Such circumstances may include a student grade dispute, content that needs
to be collected, etc. After seven days, restored courses will be deleted from the system.

Blackboard Course Restore Request

Course and Organization Data Quotas

All courses and organizations in the LMS will be subject to a 500 mb course data quota. Users are responsible for reducing content size within their courses and/or organizations and should follow the Managing the Content Collection guidelines. All video and audio files utilized in Blackboard courses can be uploaded to a faculty’s Kaltura account and shared via the Kaltura integration within Blackboard. For questions, users can contact the CIT.

This section discusses taking two or more independent sections of an academic course and combining them into one section. In the LMS, these are referred to as courses, and this is called “merging.” Departments and/or instructors should request merges as soon as possible but no later than four days before the start of the semester. It is essential to recognize that if courses are combined in the LMS after content and student submissions
have been added to a child course of merged courses, all such content, and submissions will be permanently deleted after merging the courses.

Submit a Course Merge Request