The Recycle Bin in the CLE, like in other systems, serves as a functionality intended for managing the deletion and restoration of course content, user data, and various resources within the CLE environment. Its core objective is to offer a protective barrier for users, instructors, and administrators in the event of unintentional deletion of crucial information or resources. Rather than permanently eliminating items, the Recycle Bin temporarily retains them, ensuring effortless retrieval whenever necessary.
Deleted items are automatically permanently deleted after 28 days.
Deleting an Item
To delete or send an item to the recycle bin:
- Navigate to your course home page, and Turn Edit mode on.
- Locate the item you wish to remove, click its corresponding Edit link, and choose Delete from the menu.
- From the Confirm dialog box, click the Yes button.
Recovering an Item
To recover or restore an item from the recycle bin to the course home page:
- On the course main page, click on More in the Secondary navigation bar and choose Recycle bin from the menu.
The Recycle bin will only appear in the Secondary navigation bar's More menu once you have deleted an item within your course.
- Locate the item, and click the corresponding Restore icon.
- You will see a confirmation banner appear at the top of the Recycle bin.
- Return to your course home page, and the item will be in its original location.
Permanently deleting
To permanently delete an item from your course:
- Click on More in the Secondary navigation bar and choose Recycle bin from the menu.
- Locate the item, and click its corresponding Delete icon.
- From the Confirm dialog box, click the Yes button.
If you delete something from within the recycle bin, you are permanently deleting that item, and there is no undo option!
Tips about the recycle bin:
- Hiding instead of deleting: If you’re not sure about removing something from a course and you are worried about the 28-day time limit for items in the bin, we recommend leaving the item on the course home page and simply hiding it from students until you are sure.
- Deleting whole sections: You can now delete entire sections. However, section headers DO NOT get sent to the recycle bin. Activities and resources with the section will end up in the recycle bin, but anything typed or embedded into the section header is lost as soon as you delete it. For this reason, we recommend using the Label resource for adding descriptive information to the course home page because labels are recoverable when deleted, and they can be freely moved within the center column of the course.
- Deleting elements from activities (but not the whole activity): If you delete just a single piece of activity (for example, a forum post or a chapter from a book activity), it will NOT appear in the Recycle Bin, and cannot be recovered. Only whole resources or activities are protected by the Recycle Bin functionality!
- One bin per course: There is only one recycle bin per course, and it is shared by all course editors.
- Students: Students cannot delete activities or resources from a course and will never see the recycle bin.
- Category level bin: If you are a category manager and can create and delete entire courses, you’ll be glad to know that the recycle bin will appear on the course category page as well. This means you can recover entire courses that were accidentally deleted with just a few clicks!
More info: Recycle bin