Attention eClass users,

We have an important announcement that may impact your older courses on eClass.

eClass (Moodle) has now been in production since 2010. Over the last six years, the eClass database and content storage has grown dramatically to the point where it is starting to have an impact on system performance and user experience.

To address this issue, a process to limit the number of years credit courses are retained on the system has been developed and approved by the Information Technology Steering Committee - Teaching and Learning and was presented at Deans Council on April 5th 2017. This new process attempts to balance the course access needs of eClass users with good data management practices, long term system sustainability, and application performance.

The new process mandates that credit courses can only remain on eClass for a maximum duration of four years. Non-credit courses including sandboxes, content development templates, research/collaboration courses, and eClass External courses are not affected by this new process.

Starting in June 2017, credit courses that are more than four years old will be archived off of eClass. What this means is that courses older than 4 years will be removed from the production eclass system and copied to an archive server. These courses will no longer appear in a user’s course list and instructors will no longer be able to directly copy content from these courses forward into new courses. Instructors will be able to request a course be restored from the archive by contacting eClass support. Another option for instructors or students who wish to have personal copies of the content from these older courses is to copy the content from these courses. Note: content templates restored from archived courses do not contain any student enrollments or user data (submission, activities, etc). If an instructor requires user data from a course scheduled for archiving, they should download the required materials from their courses in advance of the archiving date (and ensure they follow their faculty/department guidelines for the retention of student submissions.)

In June 2017 courses offered in terms Fall 2012 and earlier will be archived off the system as shown in the timeline and schedule below.

Anyone with questions about this new process can contact eclass@ualberta.ca or by phone at 780-492-9372 for more information.