Seeking a "Blackboard Archive" equivalent: Best practices for preserving student submissions and grades?

Hello,

I am a member of the Canvas LMS user support staff at my institution. I am looking for advice on long-term data retention for completed courses.

In Blackboard, there is an "Archive" feature that creates a single package containing the entire course content along with all student records, including grades and their actual submissions (files, quiz responses, etc.). This makes it very easy to provide evidence of a student's work years later if needed.

However, in Canvas, the standard "Course Copy" or "Export Course Content" features do not include student interactions. I am trying to find a reliable way to preserve "who submitted what and what grade they earned" for every course.

I have a few specific questions for the community:

Recommended Workflow: Is there a built-in feature or a recommended "Canvas-way" to preserve student submissions and grades alongside the course materials for long-term record-keeping?

API Feasibility: Since I am not an expert in API development, is it technically feasible to use Canvas APIs to automate the extraction of all student submissions and their corresponding grades into an external storage?

Canvas Data 2 (CD2): I have heard about Canvas Data 2. Does CD2 provide a way to link metadata (grades/timestamps) with the actual submission files for archiving purposes, or is it strictly for data analysis?

Third-party Tools: Are there any known open-source scripts or third-party solutions that the community uses to replicate the "Blackboard Archive" functionality?

Our goal is to ensure we can easily access a specific student's record even after the course has been concluded or deleted from the system.

Any advice, best practices, or experiences from other institutions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

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Accepted answers

adam_c_voyton

You could look into Canvas Archiving powered by K16 Solutions.

Jeff_F

@J_Kurosaki - our current practice is to conclude courses 90 days after the term end date. Retaining the courses supports accreditation reviews, grade disputes, and compliance with academic record requirements. But for how long? We have been doing this since 2015 and have not yet deleted courses from Canvas. Storage has been inexpensive and so there was no reason to build a solution to archive and delete courses. That will surely change at some point which is TBD. Courses are now media rich and so I suspect there will be a need to delete in the future.

For Canvas Data reports, we captured a snapshot of the data for all years onto our data warehouse. We also capture nightly updates for changes in all unconcluded courses. And our self-service dashboards that show what is happening / has happened in Canvas provide access to data for the current year to date plus the five prior years. This is for accreditation review purposes.

And yes, you are able to use Canvas Data to create a data file containing all the course, assignment, student, rubric, submission feedback, and grade information (or a subset of this) and can also create a means to download/ extract the actual student file submissions, discussion board posts, completed quizzes, etc. I've done this for an accreditation visit which was for perhaps thirty courses that were being reviewed - but I see no reason why it couldn't also be done for a larger number of courses. It takes a fair amount of effort to set this up.

As for 3rd party tools, I am aware of K16 Solutions - for example: Canvas Archiving | LMS Data Backup & Compliance | K16 Solutions | K16 Solutions . I am just sharing the link - this is not an endorsement as I have not used these services. ;o)

I hope this is helpful! ~ Jeff

All comments

adam_c_voyton

You could look into Canvas Archiving powered by K16 Solutions.

Jeff_F

I hope this is helpful! ~ Jeff

J_Kurosaki

@jeff_F
@adam_c_voyton

This is incredibly helpful, thank you! 😊

I'll definitely keep K16 Solutions in mind.
Although I'm not the decision-maker for tool implementation at the moment, I’ll be sure to introduce this to my boss when the need arises.
Thanks again for your time!

Chris

Hi @J_Kurosaki,

As it appears you know, Canvas doesn't really have built-in functionality for this kind of thing. Te K16 solution which has already been mentioned here is what Instructure seems to recommend if customers ask, but I know there is an additional cost for that.

If you're looking to do something with the Canvas API, there are probably some things to talk to your team and leadership about to ensure you'd end up with something that would meet your needs…. Here's what I can think of off the top of my head:

Is this an emergency backup type thing, or something you'd want your users to be able to access?
Do you want the solution to be something human-readable and in the same look as Canvas displays, or would plain text/json work?
Do you want to save discussions as well as assignments?
Do you have any courses external assignments (media, LTIs, etc)?
Do you need to keep submission comments and annotations?
Would this process be something you'd want an individual instructor to initiate, or would be be an automated thing that happens for every course?

For every "yes" answer to the above questions, a project would generally get a lot more complicated. That's not to say it would be impossible even if every answer is "yes" but simpler would certainly be easier. The Canvas API will help get a lot of the raw content, but if you need to have the correct embedded images linked in an archive, for example, you'd need a lot of custom code to try to accomplish that. In addition, you'd need to think about storage space for everything, as that could quickly grow and become a constraint…

Even though this isn't actually an answer to anything, I hope it helps to give you some talking points to consider!

-Chris

J_Kurosaki

Hi @Chris ,

Thank you so much for your incredibly thoughtful and detailed response.

The questions you raised are exactly what we needed to consider.
To give you a bit more context, I’ve reflected on your points and here is where we currently stand:

Access: We would like our instructors and staff to be able to access the archived data easily when needed.

Format: We prefer something human-readable that maintains a similar look and feel to the Canvas display, rather than just raw JSON data.

Scope: We only need to save assignments; saving discussions is not a priority for us at this stage.

External Content: We do not have LTIs or external assignments to worry about.

Details: It is important for us to keep submission comments and annotations, as they are vital records of the feedback given.

Process: Ideally, this would be a process that an individual instructor can initiate manually for their own courses.

Your insight about how each "Yes" adds complexity is very helpful for setting realistic expectations with my team.
Given these preferences—especially the need for a human-readable format and instructor-led process—do you think there are any specific community tools or workflows (other than the high-end K16 solution) that might fit our needs?

Your advice has given us a clear roadmap for our internal discussions.
Thank you again for your time and expertise! ☺️

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