Copy an Assignment

[jthoms]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

  Idea will be open for vote Wed. July 1, 2015 - Wed. October 7, 2015  Learn more about voting...

A good instructional design practice is to have a predictable module structure for students to follow throughout a course. Assignments often have consistent options and text (ie: honor code statements) throughout a course.

Currently copying requires creating a new assignment, and copying content for each item. By adding a “copy” option to the options gear, the effort to build a course will be greatly reduced. If this triggered a dialogue to state how many copies to make, it would be very simple to quickly build out a course structure.

Please help to flesh out this idea by discussing your particular use case in the comments.

Edit: taking quizzes out of this request -- please vote and comment at Duplicate Quizzes

Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the Canvas Production Release Notes (2017-07-15) 

[wheelerr]

I would definitely make use of a copy in bulk function. I have near daily homework assignments that I would like to be able to enter without doing each one manually. All students don't have to do all, but I want to use the group function to make certain groups do certain assignments.

[shannon_bros]

I totally agree that it is a great idea to have a copy feature.  It is requires some effort to cut and paste all of the details to make the assignments look similar.

[lepeskaj]

Please add this feature as soon as possible!!

My colleagues and I create many assignments with some of the same basic settings (rubric, submission type, points, etc.).  We end up having to repeat about 20 clicks per assignment to set these properties.  It would save us a lot of time if we could either choose default settings for a new assignment or just be able to copy and edit an existing assignment.

Thanks a lot.

[lepeskaj]

How do I vote for this idea?  I don't see a Vote button.

[canvas_admin]

 @lepeskaj ​,  it has been archived so it can't be voted on anymore.  However, it does show that Canvas is gathering data to see how this could possibly be implemented.

Here's Instructure's comment: 

This is a great idea, and one we are actively exploring.  We may not get to this in the next six months; however, it is on our radar to allow copying of multiple types of gradable content within Canvas. We expect to share more as we can on this feature's status.

Jason

[rrocque]

I agree, it makes so much sense to have a copy option. Another related issue is that I want to be able to have unpublished material in a course, even if that assignment has student submissions. The reason I care about this is because I reuse courses each semester, with the same assignments and quizzes. Each time I have a new group of students, I want to only show certain quizzes, not all of them from the previous year. The only way I can see to get around this would be to create new assignments or quizzes and to keep them unpublished until I need them. It seems silly that I have to delete my quizzes and then republish them each new school year. I should be able to copy an assignment or quiz, delete it, and then republish it so that I can keep it "unpublished" until I want students to take the quiz. I hope that makes sense.

Ryan

[hollands]

You could also hide Assignments and Quizzes from the course menu for example then have the ones you don't want removed from Modules. That way students could get to the content you want while keeping others hidden.

[bjones2]

This would also be helpful for me.  I have 2 sections and want to have two different Assignments when I give a quiz.  This has nothing to do with Quizzes done in Canvas.  I teach a skills based course on Microsoft Office.  The quiz is to take a document and alter it according to instructions given, then submit the document to Canvas.

[scottdennis]

Hey Ryan,

Are you creating a new course and copying all your course materials from the old course to the new or are you using the same course shell over and over?  Canvas is designed to support a usage pattern where you create a new empty shell for each batch of new students and then copy your content en mass or individually into the new course shell.  If you do that, you should be able to un-publish all your content and then only publish as needed.

[rgo877]

Can we please get an update on this proposed change.  There is probably nothing Canvas could do that would make my life easier as an instructor than to be able to copy assignments with all of the settings intact.  There are so many settings for each assignment that it's very easy to miss one when you want to make a duplicate assignment, which causes all kinds of problems once students have started submitting work.

Surely this can't be all that complicated to do.  And every other LMS I am familiar with has this functionality.