Best was to reuse existing courses for the following year

[winnie_milner]

This is the end of our first year with Canvas. I am going through and making a course roll over guide for my  teachers. As part of it I am trying to compare the differences between importing a course from an existing course, sharing a course to Commons (possibly to only yourself), and exporting a course to share my findings with my staff. There are several options so I am just curious to see if there is one clear cut winner. Do you have any preferences or cautionary tales and why? I really must know! TIA!

[MrsAdamsTeach · Accepted solution]

Where I work, the teachers who all teach 10th grade English work together in an unpublished course to make our modules. Then, we just copy them to our live courses every week.

I don't know what your courses are like, but I find that I like being able to just import week by week.  So maybe one of the best ways to do that is to copy the course to one that isn't published and then just copy over what you do want to use when you want to use it.

To be fair, I haven't really had a ton of experience with other methods.

[winnie_milner · Accepted solution]

Very interesting! Have you considered using a blueprint course so it automatically pushes out that new content to all the English teachers? Your Canvas admin sets up blueprint courses. 

[MrsAdamsTeach · Accepted solution]

Where I work, the teachers who all teach 10th grade English work together in an unpublished course to make our modules. Then, we just copy them to our live courses every week.

I don't know what your courses are like, but I find that I like being able to just import week by week.  So maybe one of the best ways to do that is to copy the course to one that isn't published and then just copy over what you do want to use when you want to use it.

To be fair, I haven't really had a ton of experience with other methods.

[winnie_milner · Accepted solution]

Very interesting! Have you considered using a blueprint course so it automatically pushes out that new content to all the English teachers? Your Canvas admin sets up blueprint courses. 

[kmeeusen · Accepted solution]

Hi @MrsAdamsTeach 

I was the Canvas Admin for one school until I retired, and have taught for several other schools over the years and still do - we always copy from previous terms, unless a teacher has decided to use a template that we call a "Master Course". I do not recommend the latter option.

I strongly believe that teaching requires a program of continuous improvement, and I continuously improve my courses each term. Everything from correcting a quiz question on the fly (real time change I certainly want to show up next term), to cleaning up or improving things after the current term has passed, and before the next term starts. By performing a course-copy each term, my online classrooms are constantly evolving and improving.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it! If you have further questions or need details, just holler!

Kelley