FAQ: Courses
Why is my course archived? teacher
Every course on Dodona belongs to one academic year. After the academic year has ended, at the start of October, Dodona archives the courses of that year. An archived course remains visible, but becomes read-only: students can no longer register or submit solutions, and you can no longer change the course, its series or its evaluations. All submissions, scores and feedback are kept.
On Dodona, a course stands for one group of students in one academic year. Archiving keeps that group together after the year is over:
- Your students keep the course on their homepage, under that academic year, with all their submissions, scores and feedback. They can come back to it later, for example to look up an exercise they solved.
- You keep that year's scoresheets, statistics and evaluations, for questions afterwards or to compare with later years.
- Next year's students start in a course of their own, without last year's students in the user list, last year's submissions in the statistics or last year's deadlines.
To teach the same course again, make a copy for the new academic year. The next question explains how.
How do I start a new academic year with my course? teacher
Make a copy of last year's course and give the copy the new academic year. A copy takes over the series and their descriptions, and optionally the exercises, deadlines and course administrators, but not the students or their submissions. Then share the registration link of the new course with your new students.
To make the copy, open last year's course, click the three vertical dots ⋮ in the bottom right corner of the top card and choose Copy this course. If the course has already been archived, you can also use the Copy this course button next to the archive notice at the top of the course page. From July onwards, a new course gets the upcoming academic year by default. The guide on copying a course walks you through every option.
Don't reuse last year's course
Keep last year's course as it is, and don't use it again for the new group:
- Don't remove last year's students so that new students can register. Removed students lose the course from their homepage, and they disappear from your user list and scoresheets, even though their submissions are still stored.
- Don't change the academic year of the old course. Both groups then end up in the same course, and their submissions, scores and statistics get mixed.
Can an archived course be reopened? teacher
In most cases this isn't needed: if you want to use the course again, make a copy. If students still need to finish work for last year's course after it has been archived, contact us and we'll look at it together.