Archiving Policies for Videos
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Since the pandemic, our university, like many others, has significantly increased its collection of video content. This includes lecture captures, guest speakers, flipped classes, and how-to videos. In the spring of 2023, LTS was asked to develop a video content retention policy. After several discussions within the LMS Governance Committee, we decided that the university would retain all video content currently used by faculty and students. However, videos that have remained unused for four years or more will be archived and eventually deleted.
Given the rising costs associated with maintaining these systems and cloud storage, we believe this is a fair compromise made with representatives from each college that we can implement now.
This June will mark the first test of this policy for the application Panopto. Faculty with videos not viewed in the past four years will receive an email notification indicating that these videos have been moved to their archive folder. At that time, faculty will have a few options. They can either leave the video in the archive folder (in which case it will be archived within 6 months); view it to assess its value; or follow the instructions provided in the email to remove it from the archive folder and retain it in Panopto.
Please note that this is a trial based on the new policy, and we will collect various data points before reassessing this process prior to doing it again, a year from this June. First, we will determine how much content has been archived, which translates to how much storage space we freed up and whether this aligns with our budget for the application. Second, we will evaluate whether faculty members understood the instructions and successfully achieved their goals — retaining or archiving videos. Lastly, we will assess feedback regarding the policy over the year to see if modifications are necessary. Once the process is complete, an optional survey will be emailed to all faculty involved.
We want to emphasize that, as customers of LTS, your needs are our top priority. However, we must also balance those needs with available resources and costs. Through testing processes like this and incorporating feedback, we aim to better serve our educational community.