At the end of the fall semester, OIT will implement a new Canvas course archiving and retention standard for official academic courses within Online@UT (Canvas). Under this standard, course sites will remain active in Canvas for three years after the course ends, will be moved to an archive for an additional three years, and will then be permanently deleted after a total of six years. The change is intended to support long-term sustainability in Canvas by streamlining course lists, managing storage responsibly, improving overall system performance, and reducing institutional risk associated with retaining older course data.

The first implementation will take place at the end of the fall semester. At that time, courses delivered in Fall 2022 will be moved to the archive, and courses delivered prior to August 2022 will be permanently deleted.

The standard applies to both course content and student work products within academic Canvas courses, including pages, modules, assignments, quizzes, submissions, discussion posts, uploaded files, and grades. It does not apply to non-credit courses in Canvas Catalog or to content stored in third-party LTI tools outside Canvas.

Faculty are encouraged to begin reviewing older course sites now and determine whether any materials should be retained beyond the standard retention period. Before courses are deleted, instructors may export and download course content for local storage and save assignment submissions or Gradebook data as needed. Banner remains the university’s system of record for final grades. Additional reminders will be shared with faculty over the summer.

Questions can be directed to the OIT Teaching & Learning Technologies Support team online through the online help request process.