Content & User Retention
Courses
Canvas courses will remain within the Cal Poly Canvas system for 20 quarters (5 years).
Once the quarter "Term" has ended, faculty will no longer be able to edit the Canvas course shell. This course holds all the student participation, grades, and content to support if a student pursues a grade appeal. Faculty will remain the owners of the intellectual property and be able to copy the course content into other future Canvas shells. If you need to continue a course after the Term ended due to a student incomplete, please use the form provided.
Grades
Records/Information Retention Policies - Cal Poly Canvas will hold up to 20-quarters of course content and participation to help faculty save Gradebooks for five-years (4.2.22). Although not required, faculty can export/download a Canvas Gradebook and save to a secure location, such as (OneDrive). Faculty can also choose to download files for each Assignment and download the Classic Quiz results - click on Student Analysis to download file. (New Quiz currently does not have an option to export results to CSV).
Student Participation
Canvas courses and their student participation (4.2.21) will remain within the Cal Poly Canvas system for 20 quarters (5 years). Fall 2020 is the first quarter instructors had to teach with Canvas. Once Fall 2025 starts, sometime in late February - Fall 2020 courses will be deleted from Canvas.
When a student graduates from Cal Poly, their access to Canvas will no longer work via the Portal (my.calpoly.edu) after eight quarters and their Canvas participation will remain in Canvas for 5 years.
Canvas Course Removal
Once the 20-quarter timeline has passed, courses will be deleted from Cal Poly Canvas. Learn more about the requirements and your options to save outside of Canvas.
| Courses | Deleted by |
| Fall 2019 & Winter 2020 | March 2025 |
| Spring 2020 | June 2025 |
Migrated PolyLearn Courses
AY 2019-2020 (Fall 19-Sum 20) courses were migrated into the Cal Poly Canvas system and placed into the "Migrated" sub-account folder. All migrated courses will be deleted from Cal Poly Canvas at the end of Summer 2022.
