Data Retention Policy
Information about data retention in Blackboard Learn at the University.
The University must comply with data protection legislation by regularly deleting personal data it no longer requires. In the Learn Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), this mainly relates to personal data held about users and user activity. Course sites will also be deleted once they are no longer in use to reduce the amount of space we need,
When will a course be deleted?
A course will be flagged for deletion when it was created over 5 years ago and has no active student enrolments on it.
When a course fed from EUCLID is flagged for deletion an email will be sent to all instructors on the course to make them aware that in 6 months the course will be deleted, a reminder email will be sent 1 month prior to the deletion. Instructors can opt out of deleting the courses although a reason will be asked for so we can understand why courses are required to be kept.
What if my course was not created via EUCLID?
Your course will be flagged for deletion when no enrolments remain on the course. We would recommend periodically reviewing the manually created courses you have to see if they are still required. If you wish to request the removal of a course please contact the IS Helpline who will direct your query to the Learn Service Team.
Who will be contacted when a course is ready for deletion?
All instructors on a course will be contacted, this includes the course organiser and course administrator that are recorded with EUCLID.
A course I needed access to has been deleted, how can I get access again?
If it is less than 6 months since the course was deleted the Learn Service will have an archive of the course which is taken when the course is deleted. Note that this is taken at the point of deletion if students have already been removed from the system then those users will not be in the archive.
If it is over 6 months since the course was deleted there is no way to restore as the archive will have been removed.
What is best practice for backing up my courses within Learn?
We recommend you backup your course at the end of teaching, this will create a full archive that can be downloaded from Learn stored elsewhere.
The automatic archives in Learn can be used to restore any content that has been deleted in the last 30 days but you may wish to take an archive of your course once it is fully built.
Why do we delete users from Learn?
In order to keep Learn compliant with GDPR we delete users from the system. This also helps to ensure data on Learn is up to date and accurate. You can read more about Learn’s data retention policy by opening the document linked above.
When do we delete users from Learn?
Once a user leaves the University their account goes through the standard University account expiry policy, this is linked below. Note when students graduate and become alumni their access to Learn is removed.
When a user account is deleted the user is suspended within Learn, this means they can no longer access Learn and their account becomes hidden to the majority of users. At this point the countdown begins in Learn, one year after the user was disabled the account is removed from Learn.
The University’s account expiry policy
What does deleted in Learn mean?
It means the user account is deleted. As outlined below this is different for instructors and students. (Please note student and instructor refers to the role within Learn courses, as staff can be students on courses and students can be instructors.)
Staff
- Account is deleted in full
- Announcements are deleted
-
Content uploaded into Learn remains
- Assignment drop boxes are maintained
- Individual blogs created are deleted
- Discussions board posts & wiki comments are set to anonymous
- All Grades and feedback remain
- Deletion does not feed through to 3rd party systems, these have their own data retention policies/schedules
Student
- Account is deleted in full
- All assignment data deleted
- Row in the gradebook deleted
- Blog post deleted
- Discussion board interaction set to anonymous
- Deletion does not feed through to 3rd party systems, these have their own data retention policies/schedules
We need to keep assignment data – what should we do?
If you are required to keep assignment data you should download assignments from Learn and store these securely elsewhere.
What happens if someone has a new job here?
Congratulations to them! If they come back to work at the University before a year has passed their account will be reopened on Learn and all previous interactions will be there.
If it is more than a year their account will be recreated on Learn and no historical information will be available.
What happens if someone has come back to study with us?
Fantastic! Lovely to see them again. If they become a student again before a year has passed their account will reactivate but their old enrolments will not be available to them. This is because EUCLID controls this through different instances on the student record for different awards. Their historical interactions will remain but will be inaccessible except by Learn’s System Administrators.
If it is more than a year their account will be recreated on Learn and no historical information will be available.
If you have any further questions please get in touch through the normal IS Helpline route.