Blackboard offers us two different procedures to download courses: Archiving and Exporting. The difference between them is important, as exporting only contains the structure, configuration, and course materials, while archiving also includes the interactions of all participants.

This difference implies that if we are going to copy the course between servers, use it to create a new edition, or save a backup of our material, exporting is the most appropriate. But if what we want is to keep evidence of the students' work, maintain a copy of a completed course for possible claims, certifications, and more.

To access either option, we go to Control Panel > Courses > Courses and under Backup Actions we select the desired option (Archive or Export). 

We can also search for the course we want and select Export/Archive from the contextual menu.

This will take us to an intermediate page where we select what we want to do, Archive or Export, and it will list the packages ready to download, which are those created through manual export or archiving as well as those made by automatic backups.

All these files only "live" for 30 days, disappearing from the system afterward.

Once we select whether we are going to perform an export or an archive, we will find a page to configure the remaining parameters. In the case of archiving, we will select whether we want to save the grade history and which files and links to add to it. In the case of exporting, in addition to the above, we will mark which course elements we want to export: materials, announcements, settings, etc.

We finish by clicking Submit. By refreshing the page, we can see the created package and download it.