A knowledge base article about What is the bCourse data retention policy? provided by the UC Berkeley IT Service Hub - Knowledge Portal
To enhance the management of bCourses and comply with the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) records management policies, the university has established a bCourses Course Retention Policy, which applies to all users of bCourses, including faculty, students, and staff.
bCourses sites for academic courses are retained for seven years after the end of the Academic Year in which the course was offered. bCourses sites for academic courses will be removed from bCourses annually every June. Once a course has been removed through this policy, the course and associated content are not recoverable for instructional purposes.
The content removed according to the bCourses Course Retention Policy includes:
Media content stored in services integrated with bCourses may remain available on its host platform even after a course site is removed from bCourses. For example, specific media visible in a bCourse site’s Media Gallery (or embedded via the Rich Content Editor using the Kaltura Embed tool anywhere in the site) may, subject to Kaltura retention policies, continue to exist in Berkeley’s Kaltura repository, accessible by the Owner and Collaborators of the media in their My Media. Other integrated tools may have different retention policies.
However, it is also possible that some media in bCourse sites may not be available even during the seven-year period during which the course site is retained. For example, Kaltura service policies currently call for deletion of media that hasn’t been played in four years.
Other manually-created bCourses sites that are not for academic courses, often referred to as Project Sites or Sandboxes, are subject to removal from the system if they do not have user activity for three years. If a Project Site or Sandbox course is active, it will continue to be available without any change of access. Inactive Project Sites will be removed annually every June, starting in June 2028. No backup Project Site will be available after the content is removed from bCourses.
| Academic Year in bCourses | Removal Date |
|
2013–14 (SU13, FA13, SP14) |
Archived June 2027, removed June 2028 |
| 2020–21 (SU20, FA20, SP21) | June 2028 |
| 2021–22 (SU21, FA21, SP22) | June 2029 |
| 2022–23 (SU22, FA22, SP23) | June 2030 |
| 2023–24 (SU23, FA23, SP24) | June 2031 |
| 2024–25 (SU24, FA24, SP25) | June 2032 |
| 2025–26 (SU25, FA25, SP26) | June 2033 |
Courses created in AY2013–14 through AY2019–20 will be archived for one year starting in June 2027, and removed from bCourses in June 2028. Temporarily-archived courses will be put in a read-only state; all enrollments, including the instructors’ enrollments, will be moved under “Prior Enrollments” and the course card and link to the course site will be removed from the bCourses Dashboard for all users. Instructors will be unable to enter or edit grades, add people, send messages, or add or edit course content. However, instructors will continue to be able to view, save, and copy course content—including importing content into new course sites and exporting content for long-term storage.
Starting in June 2028 with courses from the Academic Year 2020–21, academic courses created more than seven years ago will be removed annually every June.
Instructors have options to preserve their bCourses content and retain student records. Depending on your needs, you may choose to export content for use in future semesters, migrate materials to a long-term Project Site, or, in qualifying cases, opt out of the removal process via our formal request form.
Only bCourses Support staff are able to delete course sites. Per the bCourses Course Retention Policy, bCourses sites for academic courses are retained for seven years after the end of the academic year in which the course was offered. Project Sites are subject to removal from the system if they do not have user activity for three years. bCourses sites are removed from bCourses annually every June. Once a course has been removed through this policy, the course and associated content are not recoverable for instructional purposes.
If you’d like to remove access to your bCourses sites before the designated removal timeline, learn how you can restrict access to your course site or materials. Instructors can set course sites from prior semesters to be unavailable to students once the term has ended. You can also choose to just hide or remove specific content from within your course site, if that meets your goals.
If you are trying to hide a course site from your bCourses Dashboard, you can "un-favorite" a course. See more information in this Canvas Guide: How do I customize my Courses list as an instructor?
If you have a legitimate reason to delete a course site that you created in error, please contact bcourseshelp@berkeley.edu and provide the name and URL of the course site that you would like deleted, as well as the justification for deletion.
Please refer to the bCourse Data Retention Frequently Asked Questions article.