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!?

[clong]

Yes, it is fun! We just don't want 600+ teachers to use Postman and have API credentials stored in the app. Not to mention all the things that could go wrong which we would not be able to easily support.

[pkreemer]

How about adding an optional field to the courses SIS Import file?  Something like "template_course_id".  In my experience, Canvas provisioning is done with SIS Imports (not so much the API).  It'd be great to apply a school-wide template, or for the more ambitious, vary the template by course.

[kmeeusen]

Agreed! It could even be used to copy a needed module out to every course in a term like our current problem, Paul!

[cataan]

I'm thrilled to see this up for discussion; as a middle school teacher, this is an absolute necessity for me.   I have five courses as my district has inputted them and I have no control over that, but really all 5 courses are identical.  As it is, it is very tedious to import assignments, quizzes, discussions, etc. as I do them, because I have to do it five times.  The ability to simply click and import would be so beneficial to my situation.

Sometimes I feel like Canvas is more geared toward higher education, which makes sense; however, as it moves to lower grades, there are some features that might not have seemed logical for higher ed that are absolutely necessary for us middle school folks.

[cataan]

not just 'reasons' - our district mandates how our students are set up for grading purposes as well as administrative management, and at least at my school we have absolutely no control over that aspect of organization.  Our district inputs our students, and we can't touch how they do it.  I agree that groups within one course would be a better solution; however, some of us don't have that option!  Thank you for acknowledging that!

[kona]

 @cataan ​, we have many Instructors in higher ed who teach multiple sections of the exact same course - which means they have to copy their course content over time and time again for each section. The ability to quickly/easily import content into multiple courses would be beneficial to everyone that uses Canvas!

[james_thomas]

That is exactly the situation that I face quite often.  Even different classes often have several parts that are the same and it can be time consuming--and tedious--to write the same content over and over.

[clong]

Exactly! I hope we see some action on this soon. In the meantime, embedding a Google Doc or Slides into Canvas assignments or pages is a lifesaver. You can embed the content that way in multiple courses, and when you update the Doc it's automatically updates in all the courses you've used it in.

See: How do I embed a dynamic Google document into the Rich Content Editor?

[sadenniston]

I have created a workaround by creating a course called "Shared xxxx". I set the course settings to allow authenticated users to see the course. I give teachers the url of the course, and they add a link using redirect LTI to their course navigation. Anything they want to share goes into the shared course. Anything they want for their course only goes into their course.

Works well, as long as it's obvious which course they are in at any time.

[thayerm]

My institution had a similar idea, because the ability to copy multiple courses at once would  be a huge time saver. I would like to also include the specific function my institution thought would be useful. Which would be to also be able to do what is similar to the "select content" option in the course import. To be able to copy initial content to multiple courses at once, but if an error was discovered, you could selectively import and override 1 quiz question or at least 1 quiz, to multiple courses at once.

This way if let's say there is a master course, and that master course is copied to 10 sections at once, and then an error is discovered on a page, or a quiz that specific quiz questions or page could be updated in all 10 courses at once. The caveat would be that perhaps if students had already participated in the quiz, individual faculty of the multiple sections would probably have to update scores. Or there would have to a way to no wipe out student scores, if a whole assignment or quiz was updated.