Canvas Data Retention Policy


Overview

Content created in the UW Canvas LMS is retained for five years after the end of the academic year (considered to be June) in which the course section was offered. Expiration dates for courses are viewable in the Canvas "all courses" page itself.  UW-IT recommends that instructors review expiring courses and archive any needed content. Expiring courses will be permanently deleted from the vendor's servers within twelve months of expiration, after which point they are no longer recoverable. For example, a course offered in autumn quarter 2020 will expire in June of 2026, and be deleted by June of 2027.

To view expiration dates for courses in which you are a Teacher or Designer:

  1. Sign in to UW Canvas LMS by visiting http://canvas.uw.edu.
  2. In the global navigation at left, click Courses.
  3. In the Courses fly-out menu, scroll down to the very bottom.
  4. Click All Courses. The column at the right displays the expiration date for courses in which you have a Teacher or Designer role.

The data retention policy is separate from the Canvas Access Policy, which specifies which accounts can sign in to Canvas and Panopto, and when separating individuals lose access. In preparation for the initial implementation of the Canvas data retention policy, UW instructors whose courses are scheduled for deletion in December 2023 were informed in March 2023, with additional reminders sent in May, August, October and December. View a version of the announcement. The data retention policy was created with guidance from the Office of the University Registrar, the Faculty Council on Teaching and Learning, Records Management, and in alignment with pre-existing retention policies for course materials and education records.

  • Author (Teachers & Course Designers) Course content (files, html, video, quizzes), student grades, communications with students, profile information
  • Participant (Students or Guests) Quiz responses, discussion posts, uploaded files, profile information (e.g. avatars, email addresses)

When an item is manually deleted it will no longer be visible to any user, but remains on Canvas servers until automatic deletion rules apply.

A course and all of its content and associated data will be flagged for deletion five years after the end of the academic year (June of each year). These flagged items will be deleted from the vendors servers within six months. Any courses that have not been manually deleted by an author will remain until automatic deletion rules apply. Items that participants (students) have contributed to a course, such as discussion posts and uploaded files, will be deleted when the course is deleted.

On March 25, 2026, the word "ARCHIVED" will be added automatically to the beginning of the name of any Canvas course site for a UW course offered Winter 2026 or earlier. This is just a label, not a change to course settings or access permissions. It will exclusively impact how course names and codes appear.

The ARCHIVED label is intended to denote Canvas courses that are no longer in active use by the time new accessibility policies go into effect on April 24, 2026. Content that meets all four of the following points is considered archived web content and does not need to meet updated web accessibility requirements:

  1. The content was created before April 24, 2026, or reproduces documents or the contents of other physical media that were created before the government must comply with this rule, AND
  2. The content is kept only for reference, research, or recordkeeping, AND
  3. The content is kept in a special area for archived content, AND
  4. The content has not been changed since it was archived.

Courses not meeting ALL of the criteria above are required to meet the new UW Minimum Digital Accessibility Technical Standard to align with UW's web accessibility requirements.  This is a one-time change that will not be applied to future quarters. If a course offered prior to Spring 2026 will continue to be used by students after this date or will otherwise fall outside of the criteria above, an instructor or administrator can edit the Canvas course name to remove the “ARCHIVED” label. 

Imported Content

Many instructors import content from previous courses as they start setting up new Canvas course sites. Please note that any content imported from an archived course into a current or future course will need to comply with the UW Minimum Digital Accessibility Technical Standard. Also, keep in mind that depending on your import method, the course name may be overwritten to include this "ARCHIVED" label. We advise that you edit these course titles after importing to avoid potential confusion.