Brightspace purge schedule
Purging Brightspace courses and users
In February, 2022. As courses and users reach the point of no longer being referenced, they will be purged from Brightspace. This article lists the criteria used in determining what content will be purged from Brightspace. The system office performs purges annually in February.
The following sections list the criteria used to determine purging of courses and users.
Purging Brightspace courses
Course visibility
Courses will remain visible for a minimum of five full academic years. During this time period, courses will be visible in the My Courses widget on the Brightspace homepage for instructors and students. Instructors will have full access to all visible courses but student access will be controlled by the course end date. The course end date defaults to the end of the term in which the course was offered but can be changed by the instructor or a Brightspace administrator. Once the end date passes. the students will see the course in their My Courses widget but will not be able to enter it. (There are instructions for setting the end date here.)
Regardless of the five-year timeframe, courses that have been accessed by the instructor within the last two years will not be inactivated. Access is defined to be the instructor entering the course or using the course as the source when copying content to a new shell.
Once a course has not been accessed for five years (or more if there was other use), it is set to inactive and the instructor and the students will no longer see the course in My Courses.
Both for-credit and sandbox courses are subject to these rules.
An all-employee email is sent ahead of time to allow faculty to export their course content before the purge occurs. Export your content BEFORE the first of February if you wish to retain a copy of the course. There are instructions for exporting courses at Export Brightspace course components.
Course retention
Courses will be retained in Brightspace for a minimum of seven full academic years.
After the course is set to inactive (see above for details), it remains in Brightspace for at least two more years. Inactive courses can still be accessed by Brightspace administrators in the case of an instructor needing access to the content.
At the end of this time period, the course is removed from Brightspace and can no longer be retrieved.
Similar to the discussion above, accessing the course resets the timer and the course will be retained for a longer period of time.
Both for-credit and sandbox courses are subject to these rules.
Purging Brightspace users
Users will be retained for a minimum of eight full years.
All users that are eight years old (StarID and non-StarID alike) will be removed from Brightspace. You can prevent the user record from deletion if you log into Brightspace or are enrolled in a new course.