In an effort to provide faculty and students with adequate access to past course sites and information contained in the university sponsored learning management system (LMS) for reference, copying, and contesting grades while maintaining a stable LMS infrastructure (performance, storage, and bandwidth), below are guidelines that will govern the retention of course sites. Canvas is George Mason's current LMS.

“Course sites” refer to the space in which materials are hosted on the LMS. Course materials include files uploaded by faculty and or students that have access to the site, assignments submitted by students, and grade book data.

Course sites will be retained in the system for four years, and then will be permanently deleted. Faculty will receive an email one month before each deletion.

Non-term courses will not be deleted. These include sandbox, development, and community courses.

Content stored in other campus resources (i.e. Kaltura, Zoom) is often linked to from within the LMS. These tools may have their own retention policies and therefore the ability to access these materials is independent of these guidelines.

Retaining Course Content

Please note that it is the responsibility of the faculty member to archive and/or copy their course site. Faculty who would like to retain a copy of their course site(s) prior to deletion have several options:

1. Local Export
   Course sites and/or grades can be downloaded and stored on a personally managed storage device (e.g., computer, approved cloud storage, etc.) for future reference by the faculty member. See instructions on how to create an export of your course or the gradebook.
2. Course Copy
   Each semester a new course site is created for courses being offered. Faculty can opt to copy content from a previously developed course site to a newer course site. See instructions on how to create a copy of your course.

Questions

For technical assistance with course copy or exporting, or to determine when courses will be deleted, contact ITS Support.

For general records retention questions, visit University Records Management or contact [email protected].