Learn Data Retention Policy

Purpose and overview

The University must comply with data protection legislation by regularly deleting personal data it no longer requires. In the Learn Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), this mainly relates to personal data held about users and user activity.  The VLE Service will use an automated process to delete that data.   

There are often multiple instances of the same course in Learn with very similar content.  To keep storage requirements practical, the VLE Service will regularly use an automated process to delete course sites that are no longer required.   This will reduce the storage requirements for the VLE and reduce costs.

This policy has been developed in line with the University’s account expiry policy and student records retention schedule.  

User account retention

The Learn user account archival and deletion policy will be based on the account expiry policy, which gives the following periods before account deletion:

Typically, access to services is maintained during the account expiry period.  Users lose access to services during the account suspension period and deletion of the user account is completed at the end of the suspension period.

A daily process will be run which will:

• Set any users with a ‘Suspended’ staff, visitor or student affiliation (in the IDM) to ‘disabled’ on courses in Learn.  The user won’t be able to log in.  Their activity on courses will no longer be visible. Discussion board contributions will still be visible but the poster marked as ‘Anonymous’.  The user’s Learn account will remain in this ‘disabled’ state until the user’s affiliation is set to ‘deleted’ or is re-activated.   Should the affiliation be re-activated from suspension during this period, the user will be able to access their courses/activity again, just as before the suspension.

A monthly process will be run which will:

• Delete user accounts on Learn completely, one year after end date of the user’s affiliation is passed. 

Course retention

EUCLID generated courses and manually created courses

Courses in Learn will be kept for a period of 5 years from creation.     We will communicate via email to course organisers and course secretaries who are enrolled in the course site 4 weeks in advance of the course being marked for deletion. If the course materials/content are required beyond 5 years, they can be exported out of Learn as a zip file. Once a course has been marked for deletion, it will be disabled in Learn for a period of 3 months before being finally deleted.  The Virtual Learning Environment Service team can provide an empty course space to restore the zip file into the course so that any required materials can be accessed, if needed. EUCLID and teaching related manually created courses (such as shared course arrangements) will only ever be marked for deletion if they contain no active student enrolments.

If assessments require to be kept beyond five years, they must be downloaded from whichever system they are being stored in by teaching office staff or other course staff and held for the period as described in your School’s retention schedule. 

Other manually created courses (including playground courses)

Manually created courses in Learn will be marked for deletion after a period of 18 months has elapsed without the course being accessed. At this stage, the course will be disabled for a period of 3 months before being deleted. Instructors enrolled on manual courses will receive an email notifying them, four weeks before the course is disabled. 

Course storage size

Videos must be stored in Media Hopper Create rather than Learn. The Virtual Learning Environment Service team will run Learn course storage size reports over the summer months each year and will notify and work with staff on courses which are very large to reduce the size of these courses.

• Adding videos to Learn via Media Hopper Create
• Creating a video assignment dropbox
• Student instructions for submitting a video via Media Hopper Create

Blackboard’s Backup Policy 

Blackboard take regular backups of Learn database and retention of these backups will be as per Blackboard’s backup policy which states:

‘All customer and unique system data is backed up at least once a day to at least two discrete physical locations using highly durable storage. Backups are maintained for at least 30 days.’

This policy was approved on August 2019 by The Learn to the Cloud Project Board and is effective from November 2019.  It was updated in July 2025 to update links and make small changes to the policy and change the page format. 

The Learning, Teaching and Web Services section is responsible for maintenance and review of this policy.  The contact officer for the policy is Karen Howie, Head of Digital Learning Applications and Media (Karen.Howie@ed.ac.uk). 

Next review due:  Summer 2026

If you require this document in an alternative format, please email [Karen.Howie@ed.ac.uk] or telephone [0131 650 3139]

Equality Impact Assessment

Related policies, procedures, guidelines and regulations:  This policy has been developed in line with the University’s Account Expiry Policy and Student records retention schedule.