Tutorials for Moodle 1.9

Back Up and Restore Courses in Moodle

Dr. Richard L. Bowman
Harrisonburg, VA, USA  22802

I. Introduction

There are two main reasons that teachers have for needing or desiring to back up their courses in Moodle.

• Create an archive of the course. Moodle makes it easy to save all of the structure of the course in Moodle, all resources and assignments, and all students responses and submitted materials for possible future access.
   
• Assemble a new course from a previous course. When a professor prepares to teach a course in a new semester, the course structure, resources and assignments from a previous course may be restored to use as beginning building blocks for the new offering. Moodle will delete all student submitted materials and leave only the "barebones."

These functions are accomplished from within a course in Moodle by using the "Backup" and "Restore" functions under the "Administration" menu on the let-hand side of the main course page. Directions for both of these tasks are given below.(Note: These directions are specifically for version 1.9.)

II. Archiving a Complete Course

1. From the Administration menu on the main page for a particular course in Moodle, select Backup.
    
2. On the resulting page, leave all of the defaults as selected and press the Continue button at the bottom of the next page. Do the same on the next page and on the third page; note that there will be a message near the bottom stating that the back-up was completed successfully. Press the continue button on this page, also.
    
3. The final page displays the directory of the new folder created in your course file structure called "backupdata" containing a new zipped file labeled something like: "backup-[...].zip," where in place of [...] will be the course name (as it appears in the administrative database), the semester the course was offered, and the date the backup was made.
    
4. Finally click on the name of the zipped file (it should appear as a link in the directory of files) and wait for the File Download window to open. In that window select Save to download this zipped file to your network directory or your home computer or wherever you consider it safe to archive your course materials. Remember that until you have saved a copy of the backup file to a location outside of Moodle, all that has been accomplished is that a back-up of the course has been made within the course itself. This internal copy will be lost when the course is removed from Moodle.
   
5. After downloading the file, delete it from the file structure for your course so that the backup that your technology people will make is as small as possible. Also, if you have not already done so, it is a good idea to go to the course "Settings" page and make the course "not available" to the students so that it is removed from their My Moodle page thus leaving them with only their current active courses.

III. Backing Up Only the Course Structure, Resources and Assignments

To archive only the course materials generated by the instructor without any of the student-generated materials, follow the directions in Section II above with the following changes in step #2.

1. Deselect all of the User Data check boxes. One may clear all of these by selecting the None option at the very top of the Include section. Or one may clear as many of the check boxes at the top of each each section as desired.
    
   
    
2. Finally adjust the values to the parameters near the bottom of that page as shown below. Probably the only ones that will need to be changed is the Users and User Files, that is, these value should be set to None and No, respectively. Also, clear all of the check boxes by the role assignments except for the Administrator, Course creator, and Teacher..
    
   
    
3. Then click continue until you see the new backup file in the course file structure. You may have to wait a minute or so if the course has lots of material in it.
    
4. Finally click on the name of the zipped file (it should appear as a link in the directory of files) and wait for the File Download window to open. In that window select Save to download this zipped file to your network directory or your home computer or wherever you consider it safe to archive your course materials. After migrating to the location for saved file but before actually pressing the last Save button, change the name of the back-up file so that you know it is not the full course back-up. For example, add "nostudents" to right after the word "backup" in the file name.
    
5. Remember that until you have saved a copy of the backup file to a location outside of Moodle, all that has been accomplished is that a back-up of the course has been made within the course itself. This internal copy will be lost when the course is removed from Moodle.
    
6. After downloading the file, remember to delete it from the file structure for your course so that the backup that your technology people will make is as small as possible. Also, if you have not already done so, it is a good idea to go to the course "Settings" page and make the course "not available" to the students so that it is removed from their My Moodle page thus leaving them with only their current active courses.

IV. Restoring a Complete Course (with Student Data)

1. Go to the course in which you wish to do the full restore. To prepare for the restoring, click on Settings under the Administration menu and ascertain that the course is set to the correct Format (either Topics or Weekly) and that the number of weeks or topics is set appropriately.
    
2. Return to the Administration menu and select Restore. In the resulting directory listing upload the back-up file you saved previously. Then select the Restore link to the far-right of the file's name in the directory.
    
3. Click Yes and Continue on the next two windows without making any changes.
    
4. On the next screen change the "Restore to" parameter to "Current course, deleting it first." Then press the Continue button at the bottom of that page.
    
5. On the next page select the course into which you wish to place the restored course. And then click the "Restore this course now!"

V. Assembling a New Course from a Previously Archived Course (without Student Data)

If you are interested in transferring only the course structure, resources and assignments, but not the student participants nor their submissions nor grades, then follow the above directions in Section IV but use the file you created with only this info rather than with the full course data.

NOTE: If you only have a file with student data included, then you can still restore only the course structure data. Follow the above directions replacing step 4 with the follow instructions.

• On the next screen change the "Restore to" parameter to "Current course, deleting it first" (this will replace all of the existing course) or "Current course, adding data to it." Use the last option if you  have no data in the course except for a current list of participating students. ALSO, click the None option besides the entry to include user data. Then press the Continue button at the bottom of that page. 

VI. Conclusion

If you inadvertently transferred some student data such as grades or list of participants to the new course when you did not wish to do so, use the Reset option in the Administration menu for the course and set all of the options possible to get rid of all of the student data. The course structure and materials will remain, but the grades and other student items will be removed, including the grading structure!

©2009-11; Dr. Richard L. Bowman

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Created and maintained by: Richard L. Bowman ( richard.bowman@edtechbybowman.net ); last updated: 5-Sep-11.