Copy content into multiple courses at once

[seth]

  This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

  Idea will be open for vote May 5th, 2015 - August 5th, 2015  Learn more about voting...

As an instructor, I'd like to copy content from a single course to multiple other courses at one time. I'd like to be able to go to the course in which the content now resides, select items to copy, and then select one or multiple courses into which to copy the content. This would help me at the beginning of terms as, for instance, I copy content from a "master" course where I've developed my content into multiple Canvas courses, because my institution places each section of a given academic course into separate Canvas courses.

transferred from the old Community

Originally posted by: Chris Long

Special thanks for contributions from: Kat Mulvey, Sandy McArthur, Barb Miltner, Betsy Walker

  Comments from Instructure

May 2016 Update

From Kate McGee, Commons Product Manager

I'm excited to announce as of last week, we’ve updated the functionality in Commons to allow users to import content into multiple courses at once.

Here is how it's done:

• Share the course you want to copy to Commons (publicly, institutionally, or privately)
• You should be able to select any/all of the courses by check-marking the course(s) to which you want to import.
• On the resource detail page, Click "Import into Course"

More details in this guide: https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-2005

This was a request from the community. Your feedback is essential to our product's continued improvement. Thank you so much to all of you!

Preview of User Interface:

November 2015 update

I may be biased, but I'm pretty sure we have the most amazing Community of users ever!  We appreciate all of the energy and effort that everyone of you put into a feature idea, and we appreciate even more when you keep returning to tell us how to make it better.

When Commons was released we knew that it would be a possible solution for some users, but we also acknowledge that it is not the ideal user experience for many.  For this very reason, we would like to revert this idea from complete and mark it as "under consideration" while we work toward a better option!  Please follow and bookmark this idea to receive updates as they are available!

For more information on the feature idea stages please reference How does the voting process work for feature ideas?

July response from Kate McGee

Greetings All!

Commons is now available and provides the ability to import content into more than one course from a simple Commons import menu.

Here is how it's done:

• Share the course you want to copy to Commons (publicly, institutionally, or privately)
• On the resource detail page, Click "Import into Course"
• Select your course from the dropdown
• Repeat the "Import into Course" for each course you want to content copied into

Note: that you won't be able to copy multiple versions of a resource into one course without replacing the initial resource, at least not yet

Chris Long because you were the original poster in the old community, will you give this a try and let us know if it meets your needs!?

[kedgecomb]

Definitely a huge timesaver for instructors and myself!  However, we still have instructors that start with the "old course" when copying and not the new, blank course. 

[kmcgee]

Greetings All!

Commons is now available and provides the ability to import content into more than one course from a simple Commons import menu. 

Here is how it's done:

• Share the course you want to copy to Commons (publicly, institutionally, or privately)
• On the resource detail page, Click "Import into Course"
• Select your course from the dropdown
• Repeat the "Import into Course" for each course you want to content copied into

Note: that you won't be able to copy multiple versions of a resource into one course without replacing the initial resource, at least not yet

 @clong  because you were the original poster in the old community, will you give this a try and let us know if it meets your needs!?

[elise_smith]

This is ideal for the teacher who teaches multiple sections of the same content and a big time saver!!!

[cbuie]

i agree with Elise. There are certain components that we reuse over and over.  This would save time.

[julie_king]

Question: since we add content on the fly, our courses are changing almost daily. When we copy a course to Commons and import it to all classes, will we then copy and add all the old content every time we make an addition?

[scottdennis]

Hi Julie,

I believe that you can copy the entire course to Commons and then when you make changes to the master, people who have linked to the master will be prompted to accept updates or not.  Is that correct,  @biray ​?

[biray]

Yes. Check out

[clong]

Hi Deactivated user,

I appreciate you including the Commons method .  As to meeting my needs, no it does not

Many institutions compared Canvas to other LMS' when they were considering adoption and one of the reoccurring themes that was a plus for Canvas was "less clicks and screens to get it done". So when you have to go through and repeat for each course it gets to be a drag. This is why I think a great feature to add to Canvas would be to allow users to create content on the fly and have a way to add it to multiple courses at once, right there when they are creating it!

Many teachers using Canvas as a blended learning platform are creating assignments as they go along and sometime there is an assignment that they will use that is the same for different courses that they teach. One of the many reasons why teachers LOVE Google Classroom so much is because you can do this very easily an quickly (effortlessly if you will).

Here's a quick video I made to demonstrate Adding Assignments to Multiple Classes in Google Classroom

Not to say I don't think Commons has it's place, but it doesn't satisfy the intentions of this feature request. I strongly disagree that "this idea has been developed and deployed in Canvas".

[julie_king]

Thank you so much! I'll give it a whirl right now ...

[scottdennis]

Hey Chris,

Thanks for your continuing advocacy on this one.  Just a quick reply for now to let you know we saw your comment and will respond in more detail soon.

Thanks,

SD