[Groups] Copy Group Settings

[donaldjo]

Group settings should be included when doing a course copy or Import.

I have a course which relies heavily on an intricate set of groups tied to assignments (it's a negotiations course) so I need to be able to copy the course over from term to term in complete form. Currently whenever I copy the course, the groups are all lost, as well as the tying of groups to the appropriate assignments. Re-creating the groups and then re-tying them to assignments takes an incredible amount of time.

Comments from Instructure

The Canvas Production Release Notes (2015-06-27) indicate that importing a course with group assignments now brings the group assignment settings to the new course; however, upon testing the group structures within a group set do not come with it.  For this reason we will keep this feature idea open for voting.  We will continue testing and update this post as soon as we have more information.

Course Settings and Grading Schemes

Importing Course Settings from a Canvas course export package also imports the grading scheme.

Explanation: When a user imported selective course content from a Canvas export package, the grading scheme was not included in the import. Importing the entire course was not affected. This behavior occurred because Canvas was not verifying grading standard copies if it was part of selected content. Canvas code has been updated to import the course grading scheme when part of selected course content.

[kgrewe]

Please enhance the functionality of group sets and their associated assignments copying into other sections! We also use the blueprint feature a lot in our model on online course delivery. We are piloting a tool called Hypothes.is and want to use it in small groups. We cannot easily do this because of all the manual labor that would be involved. Talk about disincentivizing faculty to use great learning tools and encourage student collaboration. Please fix this!

@allison  You summed it up perfectly: 

As an instructor...

1) when I export my course I have the option to select the group sets and groups I want carried over into my new course shell (without enrollments),

2) when I export my course and include group assignments, any groups associated with the assignments are copied over with the same name.

--exported groups maintain their links with group assignments,

--exported groups maintain their group settings (i.e. limit to number of group members)

[YoonjungCook]

It's 2022 and it's not implemented yet. Please, consider to make this feature available. It is an important part for faculty. Thank you. 

[bengalspice]

I am currently having the same issue. What is the point of having things properly setup with groups/sections if groups and sections aren't copied over when courses are copied/content is imported into a new shell. 

[stevec]

Isn't it about time this was fixed? Your comment from seven years ago basically says "We thought we had fixed this, but it doesn't work."

Setting up groups for each section takes at least 20 minutes per section. This broken functionality needs to be fixed.

[zaninm1]

Canvas course copying would be much better if we did not lose groups and group assignments.  Group work is a big part of my course, and I have to recreate the whole set of assignments and groups every time I teach the class.

[tonja_kelly]

Here we are maaannnnyyyy years later still asking for the same ability to just clone all the setting in a course, including groups. It is not much fun having to rebuild all the things that are just within the groups as well as the group structure. This seems like it should be part of cloning a course.

[tonja_kelly]

When you copy a course you should really copy the course. The fact that groups that have been carefully set up (including their own unique pages) have to be recreated every single time is a failure of Canvas and limits it's use because it is not sustainable for some setups to redo groups every single time. I feel it is silly to have to special request this, copy should mean copy (or export/import).