Moodle Course Retention Policy

Many faculty find it valuable to refer back to prior iterations of course materials in Moodle. At the same time, Moodle is not designed for unlimited course storage, and carrying materials over indefinitely can diminish the performance of the application and divert resources better used on current support and enhancements.

To balance these needs, IT staff in collaboration with the dean of faculty, settled on a course retention policy of 5 academic years. Courses older than 10 semesters will be deactivated in the summer (July), after which they will be recoverable for one additional year. This policy will take effect in July of 2018. Courses created prior to the 2018-2019 academic year will be hidden and courses created prior to the 2012-2013 academic year and older will be removed from the system.

Best practices for saving course materials

If there are materials from earlier course sites that you wish to save, there are three quick and easy options:

You can create a course backup file (now called course reuse) and save it to Google Drive or other storage. This file will later need to be restored within Moodle before you can pull out individual items, but it maintains the organization of the files more exactly. It also includes all of your Moodle activities such as assignments, quizzes, etc. The ability to restore a course backup completely accurately can decrease over time.
You can download all instructor files and save the resulting folder full of files to your Google Drive or elsewhere. This allows you to pick and choose to re-use individual files, but does not maintain the course structure or any course activities. This solution should have high longevity.
You can print and/or save a PDF of your course page as a record of your course organization. Our Moodle course pages are printer friendly, so that a printed course page can serve in many cases as a course syllabus. This solution has high longevity.