Purpose and Scope

To define how long courses contained in the University of Adelaide Learning Management System (LMS), currently Canvas, (and related systems) will be retained.

This plan covers courses contained in the Learning Management System(s) managed and maintained by Technology Services (TS). It is acknowledged that there are course materials stored in third party tools.

Guiding Principles

To retain courses and content for a period of time which instructors and students find adequate and useful and to comply with the State Records Act 1997
To optimize the performance of the LMS for an optimal student and staff experience
To optimise management and minimise administration overheads, hosting and licensing costs.

Disposal Statement

Courses will be retained for a minimum of five (5) years from the end of the course. At the end of five years, the course will be deleted. Deletion of courses more than five years old will commence in January of the sixth year (e.g. courses that ran in 2017 will be deleted in January 2023). In the case of a change of platform course materials may be retained in an offline state for the required five year period. Consideration should also be given to third party tools.

Deleting a course from the LMS permanently removes it from the LMS so that it is no longer accessible by students, staff or system administrators. When a course is deleted it is automatically removed from a user’s course list. All materials stored in the course are deleted. This includes all files, grades, assignments, quizzes, links and anything else associated with the course that is stored in the LMS database and file system areas.

Courses will not be archived prior to deletion. The business owner will notify Schools of the courses scheduled for deletion. It is the responsibility of instructors to keep copies of course material they produce for re-use purposes. Where there is a business need or legislative requirement to retain material for longer than five years instructors are responsible for requesting that a course be exempt from deletion.

Governance

This plan will be managed by the business owner Learning Enhancement and Innovation and implemented by Technology Services. It has been approved by the Learning Technologies Steering Group. Any amendements will be endorsed by the Learning Teachnologies Steering Group.

Exemptions

Instructors may request that a course be exempt from deletion after the five year period. A new deletion timeframe (within a 10 year period) may be negotiated with the business owner on a case-by-case basis.

Special considerations

Programs, Schools or Faculties which need to retain records beyond five years to meet legislative requirements, for example records relating to medical students clinical assessments, are encouraged to retrieve material from the Learning Management System and store in the University’s recordkeeping system (HPE Content Manager).