Document Retention and Canvas Course Content

[MLentini]

Our campus has recently started a discussion about document retention policies around email and paper documents. In general, this is something the legal folks are concerned about as a liability issue. In other words, don't hang on to stuff forever. 

I'm anticipating the question will come about retaining class records in Canvas and other learning technologies. As we all know, Canvas saves everything, but different colleges do various levels of reducing access to courses (soft conclude, hard conclude, etc.).

So the questions for the discussion are these:

• Do you have Canvas and other instructional technologies in your college's document retention plan? (And if so, what does that look like?)
• If you're heading down this road, what issues have you identified?

Thanks.

[kbickell]

We don't have a policy. 

But after 4+ years on Canvas we're almost at our storage limit. We considered a policy but purchasing addititonal storage was quicker & easier. But a policy is something we'll need need to reconsider in the near future. 

[udelhsar]

MLentini‌ wondering if a decision was ever made.  Looking at similar issue currently,  and curious to see what others do. 

How long do you keep courses/terms within Canvas?

What do you do at the end of that retention period?  Export?  How?  

Sara Udelhofen 

[MLentini]

Hi Sara, 

Unfortunately, no. There's not a lot of interest in this from Canvas, and we're still slogging through how to do it at an institutional policy level. 

We have started to conclude whole quarters, where previously we left course concludes at the discretion of the instructors. Students can still access the materials, but can't participate (e.g. post to discussions). There's a tension we haven't quite resolved...

• On the one hand, privacy of the students and reducing the records we keep on hand, as well as storage considerations. 
• On the other, so many materials are only available to students via the LMS. As a community college, many of our students don't complete their programs on a tightly scripted schedule (e.g. 2-3 years), so I hesitate to cut off access to their past course materials prematurely. *

I still think it's a valid conversation, and saw an Instcon presentation a few years ago about how one college is anonymizing student identities when they do research. That feels like a piece of the puzzle for maintaining the value of the data for supporting learning analytics, but protecting student records. I just haven't put the rest of the pieces together.

* Yeah, I'm they guy with a textbook from my Socio-technical Systems course on the shelf behind me... and I still reference it. 

Marc

[udelhsar]

Mark,  I hear ya I too have all my books from undergrad on... just ask my husband when he has to move them (LOL)  

It becomes a large conversation from looking at LTIs that were built into any old courses,  to looking at what business practices and laws need to be respected.  I appreciate your comment regarding the progress of students through the college,  as it is a great concern.  

I did hear back from our CSM that even if a course is made inactive or deleted it can be reactivated via the Admin Function Restore Courses,  or likely via a CSV import (but I've not looked into that).  So that is comforting.  But would be a cumbersome process.   I imagine when we get to the point of determining what length of time we're going to keep courses active,  we'll also have to look into what faculty support and training for exporting content we may need to implement.  

Thank you for your reply.  

Sara Udelhofen