How do I access Canvas student data beyond one year?

[anzaloner]

I'm trying to access specific Canvas assignments and activities submitted by students last academic year. The problem is that although the old Canvas course is still accessible, all student data has been removed. To be clear, I'm not looking for student grades (which can easily be exported and saved), but rather what the students had turned for their assignments along with my feedback comments. I was hoping to find examples of previous submissions to show current students, but this is no longer seems possible.

I understand that Canvas courses are saved on a yearly basis. However, this seems to be the "Start Date" of the semester rather than when the course ended. This means that access to old student submissions becomes unavailable 5 months (1 semester) earlier than what I'd expected.  

Is this limitation a Canvas thing or should I contact my university's IT department to see if they can adjust access to Canvas archives? 

[thovey · Accepted solution]

@anzaloner 

It sounds like the students were removed from your course. Once students have been removed from the course you can no longer view the student's grades/submissions. You can restore the student's enrollments in the course to recover their grades/submissions. 

Note: Enrollments may be concluded by your institution's student information system (SIS). If a concluded enrollment includes an SIS ID, you cannot restore an enrollment from the course. Additionally, restoring an enrollments is a course permission. If you cannot restore enrollments in your course, your institution has restricted this feature.

How do I restore a concluded enrollment in a course? 

You can also manually restore the enrollments in the course.

How do I add users to a course?