Archiving a course in Blackboard saves ZIP file onto your computer in a location chosen by you. This contains all of the student grades, discussion postings and files posted by them, for example, from a Discussion Board. This ZIP file is only usable to Restore by BbAdmin by request, into an empty course shell. There are other options if you simply need to download student data offline. Contact the ITL at 202-994-0485.
Record Keeping
Since archiving a course includes all student records, it offers you a good way to keep historical records of student work.
To Archive a course for a later use of Restore by a System Administrator