Brightspace Course Deletion Policy

This document outlines standard course site retention and deletion practices and operating procedures in the University of Arizona’s Learning Management System (LMS). It applies to all LMS course sites whose enrollments are governed by UAccess Student.

We will continue to investigate additional use cases that are happening inside the LMS and will update these procedures on as needed basis. These practices are also subject to change as storage capacity changes or University or State policies evolve.

Course Deletion Information

LMS administrators will delete courses that are four years old at the end of each semester. This process may take up to three weeks.

LMS administrators will check periodically with course site owners of Development (previously called Playspace) and Non-term course sites to determine whether those course sites are still necessary and delete them as needed.

A course removal schedule is posted and viewable below. General reminder notifications will be emailed to the active instructors list each semester, and an announcement will be posted on the LMS. The notification will provide an opportunity for instructors to export or copy forward course content.

Instructor Responsibility

Individual instructors are responsible for managing their course sites, updating current sites, and exporting any course content co-owned by the instructor and the University that needs to be kept longer than four years. See Exporting Course Site as Common Cartridge for instructions.

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Exporting Course Site as Common Cartridge

Step 1

Navigate to the Source course site (i.e., the course site you want to export from)

Step 2

In the Source course site, select Course Admin from the Navbar. 

Step 3

Locate and select Import/Export/Copy Components.

Step 4

Scroll down and select Export as Common Cartridge.

Step 5

Select Start.

Step 6

Select the checkbox corresponding to Select All Components to export the entire course, or select only the individual components you want to export.

Step 7

Select Continue.

Step 8

Select Export.

Step 9

Select Done, then wait for a notification that the export has finished. The notification will appear in the Update alerts (bell icon) area at the top of the page.

Step 10

When the notification appears, select the Export finished notification.

Step 11

Select the link Click here to download the export Zip package.

Step 12

Save the file to your computer.

Step 13

Select Done.

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Course Deletion Schedule

FAQ

Why do we need to remove older courses from our learning management system?

• System health: UArizona adopted D2L Brightspace as its official LMS in 2005. Since then, the number of courses and storage space used has grown unsustainable.

  The new contract, beginning in 2025, established storage limits of 125.3TB, with overages being charged by the gigabyte. Users with large course lists may face performance and functionality issues.

• Privacy and security: Data should be retained in accordance with the University’s document retention best practices, which are rooted in retaining data for a specified period of time.

  The LMS is not designed, equipped, nor contracted to provide long-term or unlimited storage.

When will the courses be removed?

Courses generated by our student information system (SIS) or any other courses with students enrolled will be removed four years after the official end date for the semester in which the course was offered.

Can removed courses or content be recovered?

Once a course has been removed through this procedure, the course or associated content will not be recoverable.

What content will not be removed from the LMS?

All content will be removed from the LMS. Video or other content stored in third-party services integrated with the LMS (e.g., Panopto, Playposit, H5P, etc.) will remain in third-party storage, subject to the retention policies of these services.

• Zoom Retention Policy
• VoiceThread Retention Policy
• Panopto Retention Policy

Other manually created learning management system courses, often referred to as Playspaces or Development sites, will be removed after four years of inactivity. Any user listed as an Instructor in one of these courses may request that the unit’s LMS Support Personnel remove it earlier.

How do instructors save course content?

Instructors can export their LMS course site as a Common Cartridge, which creates a .zip file of all the course contents that can be uploaded back into the LMS and/or into another LMS (e.g., Canvas, Blackboard, etc.). Please note that these methods only save course content, not student data. This .zip file can then be stored by the instructor. See Exporting Course to Common Cartridge above for instructions.

How were these operating procedures developed?

These operating procedures were drafted in accordance with the university’s best practices regarding data retention and with input from the Office of the Registrar, Academic Affairs, Faculty Affairs, University Information Technology Services, the Office of the General Council, and the University Center for Assessment, Teaching, and Technology.

For questions, please contact Lisa Elfring.

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