Effective 01/21

Policy Name	Course Retention Policy – LMS
Policy Category	Academic
Policy Approved By	Vice President
Responsible Division Head or VP	Assistant Dean for Online and Digital Learning
Responsible Department	Digital Learning and Innovation
Responsible AVP or Director	Provost and Senior Vice-President of Academic Affairs
Original Policy Date	10/27/2020
Last Known Revision Date	10/27/2020
Current Policy Effective Date	1/4/2021
Recommended Policy Review Date	1/4/2023
Policy Applies To	Faculty
Additional Authority/References	Accreditation – Middle States

POLICY PURPOSE

To define how long course sites and content will be retained in the College’s Learning Management
System (LMS).

BACKGROUND

This policy applies to all course sites stored in Albright College’s Learning Management System.

POLICY TEXT

This policy establishes guidelines for Albright College’s retention rules for course sites being
stored in Albright College’s Learning Management Systems. This policy is designed to reduce
the number of historic courses currently being viewed in the course list view, decrease the
amount of storage on the cloud, and adhere to the LMS support policy.

The guiding principles of this policy are:

To retain course sites and course content for a period of time which instructors,
students, staff and administrators find adequate and useful
To optimize the performance of the LMS
To ensure that storage space is used efficiently
To adhere to the LMS support policy

This policy applies to all courses taught in the Undergraduate, Graduate and SPS catalog and
sites maintained by staff and other areas of Albright College. The policy refers to all courses
automatically generated in the registration system and subsequently populated in the LMS.
Additionally, this policy refers to any restored or otherwise manually created added courses
by faculty, staff and students. This policy applies to all users of Albright’s learning
management system.

Courses will be available to faculty, staff and students on the Learning Management System
and in the following framework and as defined by terms in the Albright College Academic
Calendar:

Courses will be made available to instructors when registration for courses opens in
the student registration system
Courses will be made available to students 14 days before the course start date
(subject to publishing of course by instructor)
Courses are available to both instructors and students for 30 days after the beginning of the
following semester to account for incompletes. See the Grades of Incomplete Policy for more information

Course sites will be available for faculty within the LMS for a period of seven (7) years from
the end date of the term in which they were taught. After that time, the course sites will be
archived and removed from the course list. This includes all files, grades, assignments,
quizzes, surveys, links, videos and anything else associated with the course site. All other
sites will be available indefinitely in the course list.

The archived course sites will remain available. This is consistent with the storage of data in
the Information Retention Policy and aligns with accreditation requirements. If during this
period a course needs to be restored, the instructor of the course will submit a request to
Client Services and every effort will be made to restore the course.

ASSOCIATED PROCEDURES LOCATION

Instructors are also encouraged to create and keep a local archive of their own courses. View the instruction guide on how to export/import your course and grades. The course export does not include student interactions and instructors have to export the gradebook separately. To have archived courses restored, submit a request to Client Services.

REVISION LOG

DATE OF REVISION	MAJOR CHANGES *(Note: electronic copies of the former versions of the policy must be maintained within the unit, department, or division)*
Click or tap to enter a date.
Click or tap to enter a date.
Click or tap to enter a date.

IMPLEMENTATION PLAN – For decision-making purposes only. This will not appear in the Final Policy that is posted to the Policy Repository.

The implementation plan consists of training and help documentation provided by the Department of Digital Learning and Innovation.

DECISION – For decision-making purposes only. This will not appear in the Final Policy that is posted to the Policy Repository.

Date of Draft Policy Review	12/17/2020
Name of Reviewing Committee/Individual
Date Approved	12/17/2020	Comments:
Date Rejected	Click or tap to enter a date.	Comments:
Date Draft Tabled or Further Review Needed (provide comments including plan for re-submission)	Click or tap to enter a date.	Comments:

View this Policy as a PDF.