As we wrap up 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 2022
- Year 2022
- Continuous Intake 2022
- Spring 2023
- Summer (May and June) 2023
- Intersession 2023
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 Centre 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, 2024 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
Last summer (2024) was the first year of the VIUTube cleanup process. Like with VIULearn and VIUBlogs, we designed this cleanup process to minimize the student and employee data retained by VIU. VIUTube is intended as a place for current content and not as a long term archive. This summer, we will be removing videos based on the last played date. Media that has not been played in the last year will be archived for one year and then permanently deleted.
For information on this cleanup process, including how to opt out of the VIUTube cleanup for specific videos you need to retain, please see the VIUTube Cleanup Process page on our website, or contact us at learnsupport@viu.ca.
Have Questions?
If you have any questions about our annual cleanup process, please contact CIEL at learnsupport@viu.ca.
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