FAST & EASY Way to Copy Content on the FLY

[clong]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For details, please read through the Canvas Release Notes (2020-01-18) and Canvas Release: Direct Share‌

A couple of years ago in a community far, far away...

I submitted a feature idea to Copy content into multiple courses at once. This feature was marked as completed with the 2016 May update made to Canvas Commons and it does accomplish what was asked for, but we want something more awesome than that.

During the time it took to vote on the idea and fully implement it, we had lots of great use cases and sub-ideas that kind of got lost in translation. It turns out that a lot of Canvas users create course assignments, announcements, discussions, quizzes on the fly and they want a FAST & EASY way to send all that to multiple courses all at once. To do this using the current commons workflow it takes 23 clicks, 2 text entry fields, an image selection and some waiting. And then you still have to go back and adjust your assignment groups and due dates!

Teachers from K-landia to Academia would all love it if this could be accomplished with less than 3 clicks and take no longer than 1 second. Here's how one popular system does this.

Let's up the Awesome and FLY!

Reference: Copy an Assignment , Copy a Discussion , Copying assignments from one class to another without using the commons.

Comments in completed feature idea: Copy to multiple courses

[scottdennis]

Thank you, Chris.  This feature idea will open for vote on August 3rd.

[clong]

Hurray! I'm putting that on my calendar so I don't forget :smileylaugh:

[jbrady2]

 @clong ​ The video was very helpful in illustrating your idea.  I guess the only question I would have, that I don't feel I completely understand, is where do you see this being implemented: within Canvas courses or as a Commons feature?  This would be great as a course-level feature, as many of our GenEd instructors teach multiple sections of the same course, and this could really save some time.

[kona]

Voted and wished I could vote 100 more times!!

[tdarrow]

This idea is awesome! Wholeheartedly agree with Kona!

[GideonWilliams]

Hey Chris, I cant seem to get the video to work for me (wanted to know the 'other' VLE!). The idea is a brilliant one though and gets my vote.

[dtheriault]

I can't begin to describe how much time this would save me. Thanks for the idea submission Chris.

[shauna_vorkink]

 @clong ​

I remember that community far far away and this conversation since it has always generated interest for teachers.  In fact, I have all kinds of crazy workarounds when I build courses since many of my assignments were basically clones with differing numbers that corresponded to each Module.

Definitely voted UP by me.  ~Shauna

[DrNufer]

We were with another LMS prior to Canvas that shall not be named (*shudder*), and they actually had this functionality.  However, they were wanting to extort a small fortune for this capability and we simply couldn't shoulder the cost.  It was more cost efficient to hire out the ID team to copy/paste rather than pay the premium.  Still, we have had dreams of making this a feasible reality.  Commons is the closest we've come. 

[ashucker]

I personally need this feature! I create material for several levels of one course and so much is repeated. I can use commons, but it takes a long time. I would love to write the common material, and be able to do a "copy to" quickly and easily. What I am doing now doesn't feel so much like a feature as a workaround.