Course Storage & Deletion

2026 Course Deletions

Anyone enrolled as an instructor in a course that is scheduled for deletion will be notified via UGA email. The following is a description of the logic applied to the system, to identify specific courses for deletion.

Courses Assigned to a Regular Semester

Most courses scheduled for Fall 2026 deletion are from the Fall 2019, Spring 2020, and Summer 2021 semesters.

More specifically, the logic used to identify courses for deletion includes the following parameters:

• All courses assigned to a semester prior to Fall 2020.
• Fall 2020 courses with either no end date set, or an end date prior to January 1, 2021.
• Spring 2021 courses with no end date set.

This set of courses is primarily regular for-credit (Banner/ Athena) courses, but may include some non-Athena courses in eLC.

Courses with No Semester or an Alternative Semester Assigned

The courses on this list were assigned to a non-standard semester and match one of the following criteria:

• End date prior to January 1, 2021.
• No end date set, were created prior to January 1, 2021, and were last accessed (by a student, instructor, or eLC administrator account) prior to January 1, 2021.

For 2026, all courses (Athena and non-Athena) will be handled on the same cycle:

• September 7: Instructors unenrolled from impacted courses
• November 30: Course deletion begins — courses cannot be restored after this date

Any course contents or materials should be exported or downloaded to another location prior to September 2026.

When a course is deleted, all course files, student grades, and student work will be permanently removed from the system. This will include all content pages, uploaded documents, hyperlinks, gradebook contents, discussion boards, submitted assignments and quizzes, course announcements, and so on. Materials hosted elsewhere (e.g., Kaltura videos) will not be impacted. Note that uploaded videos stored in the course files section of a course will be deleted when a the course is removed (navigate to Course Admin >> Manage Files to see a list of items stored as course files).

The University System of Georgia has established retention schedules for student records. The Course Records schedule (#0472-05-005) and the Course & Class Records schedule (#0472-06-008) are particularly relevant for your retention of records related to teaching.

Before course shells are deleted from eLC, you should make sure the following items are stored elsewhere:

• Retained for 7 years after the point at which the course is no longer offered:
  • course announcements
  • handout materials
• Retained permanently:
  • test scores [save to a UGA-maintained computer and/or a UGA OneDrive, Sharepoint, or Google Drive account]

The following course materials must also be retained for 7 years after the point at which a course is no longer offered, but they should already be saved through UGA’s syllabus system and/or the Course Approval Process Automation (CAPA) system:

• course syllabus
• course description
• course outline

Course Materials

Most of your course materials can be downloaded into a .zip file by following these steps:

1. Open your target course and click on Course Admin in the course navigation bar.
2. Select Import / Export / Copy Components.
3. Choose Export as Brightspace Package.*
4. Select All Components.
5. Click Continue and Export.
6. Download the .zip file and save to a UGA-maintained computer and/or a UGA OneDrive, Sharepoint, or Google Drive account.

*The Brightspace Package export option is your most complete export option for courses. The resulting .zip file will include all materials that have been uploaded to the course, as well as Brightspace-specific .xml files. The .xml files can be viewed by importing the .zip file into a new course shell in eLC (use the same instructions as found here, but instead select Import and import from a file).

Student Work

Student submissions and grades are not included in the main course export package. Use the following sets of instructions to download those materials from a specific course:

Download Student Assignment Submissions

1. In your target course, navigate to Assignments and open the desired assignment.
2. Select the checkbox for any assignments you wish to download.
3. Click Download (above the list of students).
4. In the pop-up box, when the .zip file is ready, click Download.
5. Save the file to a UGA-maintained computer and/or a UGA OneDrive, Sharepoint, or Google Drive account.

Completed Student Quizzes

1. Open your target course and go to Course Admin > Quizzes.
2. Click the dropdown menu next to the quiz you need and select Grade.
3. Select all student attempts or filter specific students.
4. Click Export to CSV or Export to Excel to download quiz responses.
5. Save the exported file to a UGA-maintained computer and/or a UGA OneDrive, Sharepoint, or Google Drive account.

Student Grades

• See Exporting the Gradebook for instructions.

A Note about Videos

Video files that were uploaded and stored as course files will be included in .zip file generated by a Brightspace Package export (see above). To view and download from a list of individual course files, navigate to Course Admin and then to Manage Files.

Videos stored in Kaltura will remain available through Kaltura and need not be downloaded from your course. Videos saved in the media library will not be removed at this time. You can access them in a new course by following these steps:

1. Open a new course where you want to use the video.
2. Navigate to the Content tool.
3. In a new module, click the Existing Activities button.
4. Select Media Library from the options.
5. Browse and select your previously uploaded videos associated with your eLC account.

The Media Library content is also accessible via Insert Stuff button in an HTML Editor.

To make this request, complete our Course Retention Request Form no later than August 24, 2026. The CTL will review requests and coordinate with the University System of Georgia where exceptions are warranted. We will communicate with you about your request via the email address you provide in our form.

At this time we are not taking requests for additional course deletions, simply due to the administrative load required to monitor and evaluate those requests.

For more support, please reach out to your unit’s primary eLC support personnel.