How can I archive a class?

Learn about how best to manage your classes at the end of each year or term

Alasdair McMillan avatar
Written by Alasdair McMillan
Updated over a week ago

You've been making great use of SpacesEDU all year, or in a course that's wrapping up - now what?

To avoid losing any content, we recommend that you do not delete your classes. Instead, the best approach for teachers at the end of the year or term is to archive your classes:

  1. Click the Home button at the top left of your screen

  2. Click the menu button (three dots) on your class

  3. Click Archive

Archiving a class makes it inactive, without deleting any content. If you'd like to preserve access for students, before archiving the class you'll want to confirm:

  1. that your school is licensing SpacesEDU Pro, with the All Work Feed option enabled - you can confirm by checking in a student account whether the All Work option appears at the top of the page

  2. that any Spaces with content that you wish to remain visible for students are set to Visible or Active in the Space Settings

To find out more about the All Work Feed, and what your options are with SpacesEDU Free, read on!

What does archiving a class do?

Once a class is archived :

  • It will no longer appear on your list of active classes as a teacher, or count toward your maximum number of classes (20)

  • Students and co-teachers will no longer be able to view the class, or add new posts & comments to any spaces within it

    • If your school has the All Work Feed option enabled, students can still see the posts from any Visible or Active Spaces within an archived class, but cannot add any new posts to the class, even if some spaces are set to Active

  • Teachers can un-archive a class anytime to view content from that class, and make it fully accessible again for students, linked family members, and co-teachers

    • To do this, click the Archived button near the top right of the Classes page, then click Unarchive in the menu for the class you'd like to unarchive

  • When a class with multiple teachers is archived or unarchived, it's moved to/from the archive for all teachers and students within the class

Are classes ever archived automatically?

  • Classes are not automatically archived for teachers using SpacesEDU Free

  • For districts using SpacesEDU Pro, we send out a survey in June each year asking leads if they would like to automatically archive all classes for their district or school over the summer

    • Keep an eye out for this survey in June - if you are licensing SpacesEDU Pro and we don't receive a response, your classes will be automatically archived in late August

    • Classes that have been auto-archived can still be restored manually by teachers if they choose

    • If you're a district lead and you'd like to proactively opt-out from archiving your classes at the end of the school year, please advise your SpacesEDU implementation contact or send us a message with the option in the corner of your screen

Is there a way for students to access work from archived classes?

  • With the free version of SpacesEDU, students cannot view any posts, comments, or other content from classes that have been archived

  • For schools licensing SpacesEDU Pro, students can still access content from archived classes using the All Work Feed. To learn more about this option, click here

  • This does include work from archived classes, as well as classes that the student has been removed from, but not deleted posts or content from deleted classes - which is why it's important not to delete classes that your students have been using!

Can I just leave my classes as they are?

  • You sure can! Simply leaving the classes from past years active, not archived, will not cause any issues.

  • This will allow your students and co-teachers to still have access to their work from that class.

  • Keep in mind that this does mean the classes will be counted toward the maximum number of active classes for your teacher account, which is 20.

  • For teachers using the free version of SpacesEDU, this is the only way to allow continued access to class content for students.

    • Once you are no longer actively working with a class, you may wish to disable student posting and commenting in any spaces within the class.

Can I delete a class?

To avoid unintended loss of student work, we've intentionally made it a bit challenging to delete a class. In virtually all cases it's preferable to simply archive the class.

If you're really, really sure, you can do it by following the steps below:

  1. Open the People tab within the class and remove any students and/or co-teachers linked with the class

  2. Archive the class

  3. Access your list of archived classes with the Archived link near the top right

  4. Click the menu button (three dots) on the class, then click Delete Class and confirm

Still have questions? Send us a message with the option in the corner of your screen - we're happy to help!

Want to find out more about SpacesEDU Pro? Contact us at pro@spacesedu.com

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