Course Storage & Deletion
This new University System of Georgia policy, approved in January 2025, will provide optimal system performance, ensure that contractual obligations are met, and maintain the security and privacy of D2L data.
Beginning in July 2025, D2L courses that are five years or older will begin to be purged from the system. This will affect banner courses (for credit) and non-banner courses (i.e., master courses, trainings, compliance, student resources).
Key Takeaways
Click on the questions below for additional information and support.
Courses will be deleted in two waves: the first in July 2025 and the second in November 2025.
July 2025 Deletions
See the Highlands_Data Purge_Course List_Banner spreadsheet to discover impacted courses. You will need to sign in with your GHC Microsoft account to access the report.
This list was created in February 2025 and includes course offerings using the Banner Term Code (ex. Fall 2014 is 201408)
Purged courses are:
-
- All courses assigned to a semester prior to Fall 2019.
- Fall 2019 courses with either no end date set, or an end date prior to January 1, 2020.
- Spring 2020 courses with no end date set.
Most courses on this first list are Banner courses. However, Non-Banner courses assigned to a regular "semester" (e.g., "Summer 2017") may also be part of this dataset, so look closely!
November 2025 Deletions
An additional set of (primarily Non-Banner) courses will be removed from the system in November 2025. This list of courses was also created in February 2025.
See the Highlands_Data Purge_Non Banner spreadsheet for the courses in a non-standard semester and match one of the following criteria:
- End date prior to January 1, 2020.
- No end date set, were created prior to January 1, 2020, and were last accessed (by a student, instructor, or eLC administrator account) prior to January 1, 2020.
If “NULL” result for last-accessed, then USG will look at the Creation date. If that creation date is prior to January 1, 2020, then the course will be deleted.
Courses assigned to a regular semester (primarily Banner courses) will be removed from the system in July 2025. Non-Banner courses will be removed in November 2025.
| Action | Banner Courses | Non-Banner Courses |
|---|---|---|
| Last date to access courses | May 31, 2025 | September 30, 2025 |
| Instructors removed from targeted courses | June 2025 | October 2025 |
| Courses permanently removed from D2L | July 2025 | November 2025 |
Any course contents or materials should be exported or downloaded to another location prior to June 2025 (for courses slated for removal in July 2025) and October 2025 (for remaining courses).
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., 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 D2L, 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 GHC-maintained computer and/or a GHC OneDrive or Sharepoint).
The following course materials must also be retained for 7 years after the point at which a course is no longer offered.
- course syllabus
- course description
- course outline
Course Materials
Most of your course materials can be downloaded into a .zip file by following these steps:
- Open your target course and click on Course Admin in the course navigation bar.
- Select Import/Export/Copy Components.
- Choose Export as Brightspace Package.*
- Select All Components.
- Click Continue and Export.
- Download the .zip file and save to a GHC-maintained computer and/or a GHC OneDrive or Sharepoint 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 D2L (use the same instructions as found here, but instead select Import and import from a file). Once exported, do not open the .zip file. It must be imported as it. Changes to the course can be made after import.
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
- In your target course, navigate to Assignments and open the desired assignment.
- Select the checkbox for any assignments you wish to download.
- Click Download (above the list of students).
- In the pop-up box, when the .zip file is ready, click Download.
- Save to a GHC-maintained computer and/or a GHC OneDrive or Sharepoint account.
Completed Student Quizzes
- Open your target course and go to Course Admin > Quizzes.
- Click the dropdown menu next to the quiz you need and select Grade.
- Select all student attempts or filter specific students.
- Click Export to CSV or Export to Excel to download quiz responses.
- Save to a GHC-maintained computer and/or a GHC OneDrive or Sharepoint 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.
