Duplicate, Clone, or Copy anything in Canvas

[jthoms]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

An option to "make a copy" should be present on nearly every gear in Canvas -- modules, quizzes, assignments, announcements, pages, discussions, rubrics...

Consistency is an important element of good course design, and this would help instructors and designers achieve it more easily.

Ideas related to this have been developed and depoyed

This idea was completed through the Khaki 2017: Priorities & Related Ideas. 

Here are the content items that were completed as part of Khaki

- Module Item Duplication: Canvas Production Release Notes (2017-11-18) 

- Module Duplication: Canvas Production Release Notes (2018-06-23) 

- Assignment Duplication: Canvas Production Release Notes (2017-07-15) 

- Discussion Duplication: Canvas Production Release Notes (2017-10-28) 

- Page Duplication: Canvas Production Release Notes (2017-07-15) 

You can read more about Khaki in What in the world does “Khaki” have to do with Canvas?‌

*We know that the ability to copy a rubric from the rubric manager does not currently exist, but we have elected to mark this idea as complete anyways.  If copying a rubric is something that you think should be developed, please add your comment and vote to https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/5167" modifiedtitle="true" title="Copy a rubric.

[csalazar]

tl;dr Commons addresses part of this idea. Other parts will require multiple changes in Canvas.

Thank you for the outstanding comments on this idea. It clearly resonates with a lot of you. There are several things we can do to make Canvas better where managing content is concerned, and we're working on it! Let's talk about one thing—Canvas Commons—that we think will satisfy a lot of the use cases you described first, and then let's take the cases that Commons won't satisfy and talk about them in more detail.

First, Commons.  Canvas Commons will help with many of the use cases you've described. You can get access to Commons now by talking with your Customer Success Manager.  Commons will allow you to upload a course, or elements of a course, to a repository where you can reuse it yourself in the same or other courses and/or share it with others. The sharing options are flexible: you can limit sharing to users in a specific Canvas subaccount or account or share it publicly with all Commons users everywhere. Learn more by visiting Canvas Commons​.

There is a Commons Feature Ideas space where you can share your ideas on how to improve Commons.  One idea that has already been submitted that you may want to comment and vote on is . This feature idea would help Commons cover even more of the cases you've described here.

Now, Commons won't cover everything you've described. It doesn't deal with content in a manner granular enough to take in your thoughts on copying / cloning things like rubrics, rubric scales, individual quiz questions, calendar items, announcements, etc.

Let's talk about these remaining use cases individually. They apply to different components of Canvas, so from a people perspective, some belong to one product manager and others to another.The folks who would work on each will need to ask some clarifying questions specifically about each remaining use case.

We've created four separate feature ideas, one for each of the remaining use cases we've identified after reviewing this discussion. (If we missed one, please say so!) Please check these out and participate in any that interest you:

The Product person responsible for the area into which each of these falls will post some questions to get the conversation started, taking into account what you've already said here.

[mlewis23]

For as many votes as this idea got I find the conclusion to it rather dismissing.  The Commons I'm sure will be wonderful, but it was even pointed out that it will not accomplish all that this idea encompasses.  Why have everyone revote on the ideas that have been linked too? Why not just start working on ways to duplicate rubrics or import pages and assignments multiple times?

By the number of votes this idea received, I think it is safe to say that it struck a chord with the people that use Canvas everyday.  The response from Canvas to one of the first ideas voted on in the new community, I find very underwhelming.

[csalazar]

 @mlewis23  I completely understand your concern. This is currently the highest voted feature request, and it has spurred multiple conversations internally regarding how we can address it. The feedback we have received from the community has been very helpful as we plan feature work for our teams.

Before putting this up for voting, we should have done a better job of clarifying specifically what part of this feature would be the most helpful in your daily use of Canvas. It is really hard to estimate or prioritize “Duplicate, Clone, or Copy anything.” Delivering this feature will require multiple pieces of work carried out by multiple teams.

By breaking this feature down into its component parts, it helps us understand how our users would prioritize the various parts of this work, so we can deliver the most valuable parts sooner. We are hard at work delivering great product enhancements (like some of the things we showed you at InstructureCon 2015, so we are very selective of how we prioritize other work.

I also wanted to highlight how Canvas Commons can be used to solve many of the problems mentioned in the original article (especially now that it is available to all schools). If you feel that the new items that were identified are insufficient, or if there is something else we missed, please let us know.

[mlewis23]

Isn't the 'Gathering Info' stage the place to better understand the priorities? Why archive this idea? Or, if this idea gets does get archived, then why not bump the five or six other ideas into the 'Gathering info' stage that have been identified as being similar but more narrowly scoped?

[kate_hill]

I agree with  @mlewis23 ​. Although I understand what you are saying about Canvas Commons, I think those of those who were so excited about this idea wanted a very basic idea, and that was to simply be able to duplicate anything in Canvas. Anything with a gear needs to be able to be duplicated.

I'm also a little disturbed, because I've loved the Canvas Community, and our support has been amazing, but it seems here like the idea is being ignored even though it was voted as most popular. It just seems like a lot of excuses and "cover your rear" type language, instead of being straightforward about how to solve the problem. Again, I've been super excited about everything Canvas, but I'm really disappointed about this, and it seems like the ball was dropped.

[kate_hill]

 @SethBattis ​, can you pleeeeeeeeeeease do a short screencast of how to take the code from Github, and put it in our Canvas accounts? I think I can figure it out from there. Thanks!

[ccalderon]

I totally agree with  @mlewis23 ​ and  @kate_hill ​. This was by FAR the idea with the most community support. Yes - it grew in scope, but the development team could have chosen to start with one item, such as Assignments. This is BASIC functionality we are talking about that is easily found throughout systems across many categories: the ability to have an item displayed on your screen and have an option to "Make a Copy":

[scottdennis]

Matt, Crista, and Kate,

Please allow me to clarify.  We have archived this idea because addressing the spirit and overall intent of it will require us to make multiple changes to Canvas and we want to be able to prioritize those changes and understand how people will use them as we go.  There are the four related feature ideas that Cosme linked to.  Our product managers are also investigating additional ideas related to copying and cloning in Canvas and we will share more about that soon.  Matt asked if it would be appropriate to add some of those ideas straight into Gathering Info in place of this one catch-all idea.  We talked about that today and agreed that it made sense.  We will update this thread good

when that has been done.

I hope this is helpful.

Scott

[SethBattis]

Huh...  @kate_hill ​, that's a good idea.

Not sure I managed to make it short, but hopefully it's at least watch-able.

[jthoms]

I’m sure many instructors and course designers would agree that the need to quickly create a structure or repeat action should be able to be achieved with as few clicks as possible. That does not quite align with the official response to the feature request to “Copy Anything in Canvas.” My understanding of Commons is not that it is a means to make copies, but rather to share entire learning objects in an easily findable way. A designer shouldn’t need to add metadata to copy an object. A true copy would make Canvas much easier for instructors/designers to use effectively.

As the original poster, I realize that the kitchen sink approach might not have been the best, so let’s try this again with a clearer and more granular approach. I’ve created the following feature requests which capture what I had envisioned.

Keep the conversation going to make Canvas even better!