[ARCHIVED] Copying items in a course

[James_Kocher_UF]

I WISH I could take credit for discovering this, but my colleague  @sgraff ​ told me about this.

If you want to copy something in your course, assignment, quiz, rubric, etc, there IS a way!

Go to settings>import content>copy canvas course.   Then do a search for the course you are in!  It will give you a warning that importing into the same course will create a copy.  Then pick "selected content" and find what you want to copy. Once it's done, you may have to figure out which is the copied version or which is the original, but for assignments and quizzes, it will be easy since they will be in a category called "imported content."

If you need to make multiple copies, make sure you make a copy of the previously imported item, or it will overwrite the first one!  So for example:

I make a copy of Assignment 1.   Assignment 1 will now show up twice (with the copy being in "Imported Content").  You need to update the name to something original, like...  Assignment 2!!

Now when you go back to import content, make a copy of Assignment 2 and NOT Assignment 1, or else Assignment 2 will be replaced with a new copy of Assignment 1.

It's not perfect, but it WORKS!  And is a great time saver!

James

[kona]

That's pretty cool! Thanks for sharing!

[James_Kocher_UF]

I'm REALLY looking forward to using this with rubrics!  They can be a pain to build

[galyenk]

 @James_Kocher_UF  Is there a reason why you would copy an assignment over just using "Find a Rubric" so you don't need to rewrite them? (I just wanted to make sure I understood what you meant, I'm continuously learning!)

[James_Kocher_UF]

 @galyenk 

I don't know if you can copy an assignment by finding the rubric.  You could copy the rubric that way if it were from another course, I think.   Is this what you are asking?

James

[travis_thurston]

That's a good way to use the course copy,  @James_Kocher_UF ​ I'll have to try it out.

[u0291895]

Genius! Thank you.

[scottdennis]

Pretty cool, James.  I knew about the first part but not that you can get around the previously copied content being overwritten.  Thanks!

[jordan]

Great approach, James!

If only there were the option to do the course content copy by a specified quantity! That could even put the ​ feature idea to rest, imho. I wonder how much easier it would be to add this "copy by quantity" feature to the course import tool, rather than adding it to every content type in Canvas. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[jordan]

Hey James... this is a great piece of content. It might be a good idea to "Convert it to a Document" (as seen here) Do you have this capability?

It doesn't make a huge difference but a document might tend to hold a little more weight and appear as more "official" than a discussion. I tried to convert it and it labelled me as the author and that's not good, so let's see if you can do it 😉

[James_Kocher_UF]

I'll give it a go this week!

[hambletonlj]

James,

In our institution many times instructors need to make a copy of a quiz so they can give it to a student who has a disability at a later time and I just tested twice your solution, in our test instance, using two different quizzes and got the following results:

• Quiz was duplicated as expected.
• Quiz copy had the exact same options as the original and it appeared twice for the students and twice in the gradebook. Do you know how to prevent that?

Also, what do you mean by "Once it's done, you may have to figure out which is the copied version or which is the original, but for assignments and quizzes, it will be easy since they will be in a category called "imported content." Where do I see the category called "imported content?"

Thanks.

[rpetrina]

 @hambletonlj ​, why would the "Moderate this Quiz" not function to allow your students with disabilities to take the quiz at a later time? Differentiated Assignments (Canvas Studio: Granular differentiated assignments​) might also solve your issue.

[hambletonlj]

Hi Renee,

Because the instructor would like to make changes to the test because he deploy it to the student.

[jdubas]

I noticed that it also duplicates the rubric attached to the assignment. I guess this means that this workaround is best before adding any rubric to it, otherwise you end up with multiple versions of the same rubric if you copy an assignment more than once.