Background

University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Learning Management System (LMS), Canvas by Instructure, has been in use at the university since 2016. With Canvas in use at UTK for close to 10 years and over 226,000 total courses in the system, archiving content will streamline course lists for instructors, ensure we stay within contractual storage limits for Canvas content, and improve overall system performance. The longevity of this platform and the accumulation of data necessitate a process for archiving and eventually deleting past-term course sites in Canvas. Furthermore, eliminating past-term course content from the LMS will reduce risks for the university that might be associated with that data (e.g., accessibility compliance, privacy, and legal liabilities). An archiving solution is a proactive step to improve the teaching and learning experience for faculty and students and towards managing Canvas content in a sustainable way for the future.

Purpose

This standard establishes the expectation that Canvas course content will be archived after at least three (3) calendar years have elapsed since a course ended. The standard further outlines the stages of course material status in Canvas as determined by the course end date.

Scope

All course sites in Canvas that were provisioned to support for-credit courses are in scope of this standard.

This standard only applies to content in UTK’s academic instance of Canvas (utk.instructure.com). The Canvas Catalog instance associated with non-credit/non-degree certificate courses and programs (ut.instructure.com) is intentionally excluded from this standard.

Standard

Beginning at the end of Summer 2026, Canvas courses will remain active for three years, will be stored in the archive for another three years, and then will be purged from the archive. This model will ensure that all Canvas courses are retained, either in an active or archival state, for at least six years.

Courses will be maintained, archived, and deleted as follows:
– Years 1 – 3 after the course was delivered, the course will remain active in Canvas.
– Years 3 – 6 after the term end date of a course, the course will be archived.
– At year 6 after the term end date of a course, the course will be deleted from the archive.

This process is reflective of the system-wide policy of a six-year preservation of student activity and grades.

Maintaining course content and student participation beyond the six-year period:
– Course content can be exported and downloaded to local storage
– Assignment submissions and the course Gradebook can be downloaded

NOTE: Courses delivered prior to August 2022 will be purged permanently.

Example of how this standard will be implemented:

Month	Active Courses in Canvas	Courses in Archive	Courses Purged includes empty shells
As of August 2026	2023, 2024, 2025, Winter Mini 2026, Spring 2026, Summer Mini 2026, Summer 2026	Fall 2022	2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, Winter Mini 2022, Spring 2022, Summer Mini 2022, Summer 2022
As of August 2027	2024, 2025, 2026, Winter Mini 2027, Spring 2027, Summer Mini 2027, Summer 2027	2023	Fall 2022
As of August 2028	2025, 2026, 2027, Winter Mini 2028, Spring 2028, Summer Mini 2028, Summer 2028	2023, 2024	2023

All course content and student work products (in provisioned course sites only) will be covered by this plan. The exception is data stored in external, third-party sites for our Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) integrated tools. The LTI tool data is not within Canvas itself and therefore no data from these tools will be extracted or stored in our archive directly, but pointers to such content in third-party sites will be maintained. Should a course be copied from the archive, back into Canvas as active, it is expected that the tool data will still be available.

While the Gradebook will be kept in the archive, our system of record for grades after a semester ends is Banner. Details can be viewed in the archive, but it should not be assumed that the final grade in Canvas matches what was submitted by the instructor at the end of a semester.

Compliance and Enforcement

This standard will be validated and updated for compliance once per year and reviewed by the Manager of the Teaching & Learning Technologies (TLT) support group, no later than June 1. Each year, after the Summer Term ends, processes will run to archive and delete courses per the schedule in the table above. Consistency of process year over year is key for campus-wide trust in the OIT TLT support group.

Definitions

Course: A course is the key unit for this standard. There are two major components here: course content and student work products.

Course Shell: A container for course materials. For every course section in the Timetable, a course shell is provisioned automatically using data from Banner.

Course Content: This represents the materials in a course added by instructors, teaching assistants, and designers, including but not limited to Pages, Modules, Quizzes, Assignments, Calendars, etc. This data generally can be re-used and is often copied between course shells each semester.

Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI): This is the 1edtech standard by which tools are added into Canvas. These tools can be authored by Instructure, but most of these are from third-party vendors.

Provisioned Course: Courses that are created, using a data feed from Banner, within an academic term. The archival plan will explicitly exclude non-provisioned courses. One easy way to tell if a course has been provisioned is the presence of a course SIS_ID in the format {TERM}_{CRN}_{SECTION}, for example: 202540-20002-001.

Student Work Products: Specific work done within a given semester by a student. This includes, but is not limited to, assignment submissions, discussion board posts, quiz submissions, uploaded videos, and grades.

References

UT Policy FI0120 – Records Management

Maintenance of Standard

The Office of Innovative Technologies (OIT) Teaching & Learning Technologies (TLT) Support group is responsible for this Standard. Submit an online help request with questions or concerns.