As we get to the end of the spring semester we want to remind you about the cleanup processes for VIULearn, VIUTube and VIUBlogs. In order to minimize the amount of student data kept in any of our systems, and to ensure that these platforms continue to be places for current and active course materials, we have implemented retention processes for these platforms. Keep reading to learn about the process for each of these systems and what you need to do to make sure you don’t lose any of your course materials in these cleanups.

VIULearn Cleanup

Every summer, on the first working day of July CIEL permanently removes all courses older than two academic years from VIULearn. This year we will be removing the following semesters: 

• Fall 2020
• Year 2020
• Continuous Intake 2020
• Spring 2021
• Summer (May and June) 2021
• Intersession 2021

If you taught in any of these semesters and have teaching materials you want to retain or that you want to carry forward for future offerings of this course, there are a couple of options. You can create a backup of your content and store it on your computer, OneDrive, or an external harddrive. Exported course packages can be imported back into VIULearn if you need those materials in a future course. 

The other option available is to request a manually created “Development Course” be created for you in VIULearn and copy your learning materials into that space. Development courses are designed to hold material that is a work in progress and should never have students enrolled. These course spaces are intended for short term use when instructors need a place to develop course materials and do not have an official course shell available for the course they are working on. In the future, when the official course is available in VIULearn, these materials can then be copied into the course and shared with students. 

If you have student permission to retain examples of exceptional work from assignments or other activities in VIULearn and you’re not sure how to save these examples please contact the center for Innovation and Excellence in Learning at learnsupport@viu.ca and one of our Learning Technology Support Specialists will be happy to assist you with backing up that content.

You can also book a consultation to get help with backing up your course materials so that you can save them offline.

VIUBlogs Cleanup

VIUBlogs is meant to be a place for current and ongoing projects including class blogs, eportfolios and other web-based projects by students or employees. This summer, any VIUBlogs site with a ‘last updated’ date earlier than July 1, 2022 will be removed from VIUBlogs. 

Every year dozens of blogs are set up and then abandoned (often never updated after the day of creation), others are set up for short term projects that end after one semester and are not maintained beyond that, and, of course, every year students graduate and employees move on to new roles or opportunities and lose the ability to access and maintain sites they owned. The VIUBlogs Site Retention and Removal Process is designed to remove all of these sites from VIUBlogs to minimize the amount of student data and outdated information on the VIUBlogs network and to free up unique site URLs for future use. In order to ensure that any class projects that were used to help determine student’s grades are retained for at least one year, we will only be removing sites that have not been updated in over one year. 

The site updated date on a VIUBlogs site reflects the last time a page or post was published to the site, or the last time an already published page or post had an update saved. If you have a site you do not update regularly but want to make sure that your site is retained, the following actions on a site will update its ‘last updated’ date

• Publish a new page or post 
• Edit an existing page or post and publish those changes 
• Change the visibility of your site (found under Settings > Reading) and save that change
  • Note: you must select a different setting than what you already have for this change to update the site 

If you have questions about the VIUBlogs cleanup or would like to double check the last update date for your site, please contact CIEL at learnsupport@viu.ca and include a link to your site.

VIUTube Cleanup

The VIUTube Retention Process will not be fully implemented until 2024. The intention of the cleanup process is to minimize the amount of unnecessary student and employee data being stored on VIUTube. This platform, like VIULearn, is intended as a place for current content and not as a long term archive. You can learn more about the VIUTube Cleanup process on the CIEL website. 

This summer, we will not be removing any videos based on the age of the video or the last played date. However, if you have videos on your account that you will not need after July 2023, you can add the optional tag “Include_in_Cleanup” to the video and we will delete any video with this tag for you in July. The process of opting in to the deletion is intended to help instructors and is entirely optional. If you regularly record Zoom sessions or other course content that you only need for one semester you can add the Include_in_Cleanup tag to have CIEL delete that content on your behalf the following July. The owner of any media in VIUTube also always has the ability to delete content from their VIUTube Manage Media page. 

If you have any questions about the new VIUTube or the cleanup process, please contact CIEL at learnsupport@viu.ca. 

Have Questions?

We will not be holding a scheduled session next week as a follow up from this blog, but we would love to hear from you. If you would like to book a consultation or ask a question please reach out to learnsupport@viu.ca.