Learn what a Session is, how Session statuses work, and how to archive and restore Sessions to keep your Sessions page organized.
A Pear Deck Session is a single presentation run of a Deck or Vocabulary List. Each time you present to a class, Pear Deck creates a new Session and saves every student response inside it. If you present the same Deck to 3 different classes, you get 3 separate Sessions . one per run.Sessions cannot be permanently deleted. This is intentional: deleting a Session would destroy the student responses inside it. To keep your Sessions page organized, archive Sessions instead.
Every Session has a status that controls how students can interact with it. There are 3 statuses.
Status
What it means
Live
The Session is active and teacher-paced. Students can join, but the teacher controls which slide is visible. Student View syncs to whatever the teacher shows in Projector or Dashboard View. Best for in-person or synchronous remote lessons.
Student-Paced
Students can navigate through all slides independently and respond at their own pace. The teacher does not need to keep the Session open. Applies to Slides Sessions only.
Closed
The Session is inactive. No one can join, even with a Join Link or Join Code.
Sessions also appear in one of 2 lists on your Sessions page: Active or Archived. Status and list location are independent. An archived Session can have any status.
Vocabulary and Flashcard Factory Sessions work differently. They stay in Live status and cannot be set to Closed, though you can archive them. To keep students in a Flashcard Factory Session, keep your Projector View open in a browser tab. When you close it, students lose access.
If a student joins an archived Session using its permanent Join Link, Pear Deck automatically restores the Session to the Active list. Join Codes expire after 1 week, but Join Links are permanent.
No. Sessions cannot be permanently deleted. Pear Deck preserves Sessions to protect student responses. To remove a Session from your Active list, archive it instead.
Sessions with no new student responses for 30 days are automatically archived. Your Session and all its data are still available. To find it, go to Sessions and select the Archived tab.
Join Codes expire after 1 week. Join Links are permanent and can be used to rejoin a Session at any time. If a student uses a Join Link to enter an archived Session, Pear Deck restores it to the Active list automatically.
Does Archiving a Session Prevent Students from Rejoining?
No. Archiving is for organization only. It does not close the Session or restrict access. Students can still join an archived Session using its Join Link, which restores it to Active automatically. To prevent students from joining, set the Session status to Closed before archiving.
