10-090 Life cycle of courses
What you need to know
In accordance with the OpenOlat terms of use, the following deletion periods are set for courses:
- 18 months after the end of the semester: Courses are set to Finished status.
- 24 months after the end of the semester: Courses are moved to the Trash.
- 1 month after being moved to the recycle bin, courses are Permanently deleted.
End of Summer semester: 01.09.
End of Winter semester: 01.03.
Status Finished: No new updates or activities can be added. The course content remains accessible for teaching and reference purposes.
Trash: All users from the course are removed, the course itself becomes invisible. The course can be restored if required.
Permanently deleted: The deletion process removes all course content. If learning resources such as tests, blogs, forms or portfolios are in the personal folder of the course owner, all course information is permanently archived as a zip file under /private/archive.
The terms of use can be found in OpenOlat under Profile -> Settings -> Terms of use.
An example
- A course was created in the summer semester 2024 (SS24).
- The end of the semester for this course is 01.09.24.
- The course is set to Completed status 18 months after the end of the semester, i.e. on 01.03.26.
- The course is moved to trash a further 6 months later (a total of 24 months after the end of the semester), i.e. on 01/09/2016.
- 1 month after being moved to trash, the course is finally deleted, i.e. on 01/10/2016.
What you need to do
- You can find out how to save course content at HelpCard 10-060.
- If, for good reason, courses should be available for longer than planned in the lifecycle, you can apply for an extension at Service Desk. In the interests of data minimisation and data protection and to ensure smooth operation, we ask you to handle data and resources with care.