When would you use this?
Do you teach more than one section of the same course? Do you teach the same course in different semesters? Did you invest a lot of time setting up an assignment/module/unit one time and you would like to use that same structure again? If you said "yes" to any of this, you may love to know more about how you can reuse content in Canvas! We know that building things in the LMS takes time, so read on to learn about the different ways that you you can reuse things from course-to-course or from semester-to-semester in Canvas.
Instructions:
To reuse materials from this past course, you have three options and what you choose depends on how much of the material you want to bring into the new semester.
- Copy the entire course. To do this, go to your current course, from the Home page select Import Existing Content. From the next screen, choose the type (Copy Canvas Course) and then you can select All Content and click the gold Import button. This will take a minute or two, but it’s pretty quick. You will see all the content come forward into this new semester’s course.
- Copy some of the course. To do this, go to your current course (F21) and follow the same steps above to Import existing Content. But this time, don’t select “All”… instead, choose Select Content and click Import. Then, you will be given a new button just under that area where you can select the material you want to import. If it’s a whole module, you can just choose the module, or all the modules. look for the options to expand the different categories of stuff. There is a confirming button once you make your selections, but I forget what it is called; I think it is gold in color.
- Use Copy To in order to push specific elements forward. This is effectively similar to option 2, but you start in the old/past course instead of the current course. If you are perusing through the old course and you see a module you want to grab, or even just a single element from a module, you can click the three-dot (“more”) menu and choose Copy To. A panel will appear on the right and you will be prompted to select or type your new course information into the box. And then click Copy (I think that is what it is called; it is definitely a gold-colored button). This option is good for bringing one or two things over. But if you are going to take this action more than 5 times, I would say that option 1 or 2 would be more effective. This is not a good option if you are trying to bring over grading criteria and inter-linked things pages and overall structure.
Environment/Applies To:
Canvas
Additional Information:
NOTE: If you are importing large quantities of content into an active course, it may be beneficial to unpublish the course until you have a chance to adjust dates.