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Course life cycle FAQ

This article deals with some typical questions relating to the course life cycle process. Further information on the process can also be found on the Moodle overview page.

By regularly cleaning up courses, we are pursuing the following goals:

  • Fast and reliable Moodle platform
    • By regularly cleaning up old courses and the associated release of storage space and computing power, you help to keep our Moodle platform performant and reliable. This also enables us to operate the system as energy-efficiently as possible.
  • Relevance and up-to-dateness of courses in the system
    • By regularly reviewing and deleting courses, we ensure that the courses and materials provided in the system are as up-to-date and relevant as possible.
  • Better clarity and structure
    • The reduced number of courses in the system makes it easier for you to maintain an overview, as your dashboard is no longer overloaded with old courses.
      This means you can find the courses you want much more quickly.
  • Data protection
    • As every course also stores data about the students enrolled, the course lifecycle and the associated purging of courses actively contributes to data protection.
  • Clarity about retention periods and possibilities for reusing content
    • The course lifecycle means that the standard retention periods for Moodle courses are documented and accessible. New options for reusing content have been created and our instructions and support for this have been improved, see “I would like to reuse content from an older course” below.

Courses that are in a course category older than 8 semesters are scheduled for deletion, and all instructors and assistants of the course are notified by email. At the end of the 2025/26 winter semester, this will affect the 2022 summer semester and earlier.

Courses in the course area “Semesterübergreifende Kurse" (Cross-semester courses) will only be scheduled for deletion, if they are older than 8 semesters and have not been accessed for 9 months.

You can of course also have certain of your courses deleted by us at any time..

Of course, your Moodle courses will not be deleted from one day to the next and you will be informed in advance via your registered e-mail address when your Moodle courses are scheduled for deletion.

The cleanup process runs twice a year and is initiated 1 month after the start of each lecture period. Courses are scheduled for deletion if they meet one of the following criteria:

  • They are located in course categories that date back at least 8 semesters.
  • They are located in cross‑semester course categories (“Semesterübergreifend”) that are at least 8 semesters old and have not been accessed for at least 9 months.
  • They are at least one year old and do not contain the roles Instructor or Assistant (“Lerhende”/“Assistenz”). -These “orphaned courses” are immediately set to invisible and scheduled for deletion after six months.
Course life cycle (click on image to enlarge)
Course life cycle (click on image to enlarge)

Example: A course from the summer semester 2022 is scheduled for deletion in the clean-up process in the summer semester 2026.

  • You will therefore receive an email (email A) in mid-May 2026 informing you of the pending deletion. If you (or other lecturers/assistants of the course) do not take any action, the course will be hidden from students 30 days later. The course will still be accessible to you at this time and you will still be able to view your activities and materials and, if necessary, make your own backup or transfer content to newer courses.
  • 30 days after the first e-mail, you will receive a second e-mail (e-mail B) and have another 60 days to postpone the deletion.
  • If again no action is taken after these 60 days, a backup of the Moodle course is automatically created on our server and the course is deleted from Moodle. The deletion will therefore take place 90 days after the initial email, in this case at the end of July. The created backup will be retained on our server for one year before being permanently deleted.

Postponing the deletion process excludes a course from the clean-up process for 6 months. After these 6 months, you will receive e-mail A again. After 30 days without action, you will receive e-mail B again, and after a further 60 days without action, the course will be automatically backed up and deleted. Again, you have the option of postponing the clean-up process for another 6 months.

The following table shows the timeline of the process using the summer semester 2026 as an example.

Note that the specified number of days means that the subsequent activities are only triggered on the next working day.

Date Action Time remaining
15.05.2026
  • First e-mail notification for affected courses is sent
    (Courses SoSe 2022 and older)
  • Teachers and assistant(s) can “Keep course” via the Moodle page linked in the mail
 Until course is deleted from Moodle: 90 days
Until course is hidden for students: 30 days
15.06.2026
  • If no action was taken by the teacher/assistant, the course is hidden
    (students can no longer access, access remains possible for teachers/assistants)
  • Teachers and assistants are notified that the course was hidden. They can still decide to “Keep course”.
 Until course is deleted from Moodle: 60 days
17.08.2026 If no action was taken by the teacher/assistant:
1. Course backup file is created
2. Course in Moodle is deleted 		Until the course backup file is deleted: 1 year
16.08.2027
(originally 17.08. – but as this is a Saturday, the following working day now applies) 		Course backup file is deleted
Course is no longer recoverable

Our Moodle platform is explicitly not designed as an archive system.

This is partly due to data protection regulations: When students leave the university, personal data must also be deleted after a short follow-up period – Users in Moodle are then anonymized so that no conclusion can be drawn about the individuals. Consequently, assessments and submissions can no longer be accessed.

In order to archive content and coursework properly, you should carry out a course backup at the end of the semester and also save your students' submissions.

Course backup and recovery

Download submissions

We support the reuse of your created content as a matter of course. The desired reuse of content is not a fundamental argument against deleting a course – there are various options depending on the case.

Please contact us and together we will find the best solution.

See also: “Moodle tip: Save course at the end of the semester & import course (content) at the beginning of the semester”