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CourseLife: Canvas Course Lifecycle Process Begins in June

Posted Date: May 27, 2026

Northwestern will implement CourseLife, a new Canvas course lifecycle management process designed to improve how course content is stored, managed, and maintained. CourseLife introduces a structured approach to managing course site materials, addressing the ongoing accumulation of Canvas content and the associated risks to data security, legal liability, and system performance.

CourseLife is the name for both the course lifecycle process for Canvas and the faculty-facing application instructors use to manage the archiving of their Canvas course site content. CourseLife will move CAESAR-based Canvas course site content into an archived state after four years, initiating a process that culminates in content deletion at the eight-year mark. Instructors and students may download their content at any time before it is archived.

Why This Update is Necessary

  • Reducing accumulated data in Northwestern’s Canvas system will impact data management and enhance user experience.
    • Instructors with a high number of enrollments will experience faster Canvas page load times.
    • Version management challenges for regularly occurring courses will be improved.
  • Having a process and timeline for retaining digital course materials is considered best practice for learning management systems. A similar process existed for Blackboard, Canvas’s predecessor, and it is restarting now.  

What You Need to Know   

  • Courses that originate in CAESAR (e.g., were used in service of a for-credit course) will remain active in Canvas for four years from the end of the course’s term.
    • After four years, the course sites will enter an archived state, in which their contents will remain accessible to Canvas admins but not to instructors or students. Instructors can request access to archived materials through a request form.
    • After four years in the archived state — eight years from the course’s original end date — the course site and its contents will be deleted.
    • Course sites that do not originate in CAESAR, such as “Class of” sites containing cohort-based information for students, are exempt from this process.
  • The CourseLife archive process will run twice a year: in June, at the conclusion of the spring term, and in December, at the conclusion of the fall term.
    • Instructors who need more time to retain course content can request a one-time, six-month exemption from archiving course sites via a simple one-click-to-exempt process in the faculty-facing app. Instructions for using this feature are available on the CourseLife information page.
  • The first batch of course sites, which will include those from all terms prior to and including Spring 2022, will enter the archive phase on June 17, 2026. If an instructor does not exempt a course site in advance, it will be moved to the archive phase on this date.
  • While some older course sites currently fall outside the eight-year retention period, they will be archived rather than deleted. Their contents will be deleted in June 2030.
  • Instructors, TAs, or other support staff who were manually added to a course site will not have permission to use the CourseLife application.

Options for Retaining Course Content for Future Use Outside the CourseLife Schedule

Instructors who want to save a copy of a course’s materials for future use should create a prep site using the Northwestern Canvas Support Chatbot, then import the source course’s materials into that site. TAs and other course support staff with access to the original course can take this action on an instructor's behalf.   
If you have any questions or concerns about the retention of instructional materials, please complete the request form in the top right corner of the CourseLife information page in the Northwestern Service Catalog.