Commons: Seeing all my content; not what I shared

[maryanne_mills]

Hi,

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but after I share a course to Commons, I want to see what it looks like when a person downloads it, so I click on the blue download button on the right, and up pops ALL my Canvas content as if I shared my entire Canvas library instead of the specific course I wanted to share. 

Is it because I am the author and I see all my content automatically, or did I somehow share my entire library of courses?

Thanks for any assistance!

Maryanne

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Hello  @maryanne_mills  Thank You for posting your question.  I think you may be misunderstanding how Commons works...and specifically the screen that you are asking about.  I'm not really sure it's necessary for you to test out what your course would look like after it is shared to Commons.  When someone imports your course that was shared to Commons, it should look exactly like your own course...but in their own course shell.  When you click on the blue "Import/Download" button within Canvas Commons, the list you see is only listing all the courses you are currently enrolled in as an instructor.  That screen does not mean you've shared your entire Canvas library to Commons.  All that screen is allowing you to do is to select one or more courses (where you are the instructor) to import the shared content to.  So, for example, you might have done the following:

1. Initially shared the course "WVC Information Literacy" to Canvas Commons.
2. Navigated to Canvas Commons.
3. Clicked on the "WVC Information Literacy" course in Canvas Commons that you just shared.
4. Clicked on the blue "Import/Download" button.

At this point you would be selecting one or more courses where you wanted to import that "WVC information Literacy" course to.  But, as I indicated earlier, it's not really necessary to do this...because it's already out in Commons and others who import this resource from Commons will see the content built in their own course...just like you had built it in your own course.

You can certainly preview the content following this Guide: How do I preview resources in Commons? ... but these instructions are really meant more for people wanting to preview content that isn't theirs.  It used to be that people would have to first import content from Commons into their own courses to see what it looked like.  Even more frustrating was that they would have to delete the content from their own course if it wasn't what they wanted.  But, within this past year (I think?), Instructure implemented the possibility to preview content before importing it into your own course.

I hope this information will be of help to you, Maryanne.  Please let Community members know if you have any questions about this...thanks!

[maryanne_mills]

Hi Chris,

Thank you for your explanation. So, if I logged in as someone else, and wanted to download WVC Infolit, I would see it listed along with all my current courses, and I could click on it to download it. I'm just wondering why Canvas would list all of my current courses (and showing boxes to check) when all I want to do is download that one course.  You say that I can import the course into one of my current courses. I guess that would appear on the next screen as an option since I didn't go through with downloading it.

I'm going to test it out by downloading another person's Commons content and see where it takes me.  In the meantime, I really appreciate your explanation. As someone new to Commons, I'm still figuring it out. I've actually never downloaded other content, so this will be a good exercise. 

Best,

Mayranne

[Stef_retired]

 @maryanne_mills , to clarify, the list in your screenshot shows the destination courses (which one of my courses do I want to import this content into?). That's why it shows the checkboxes.

[maryanne_mills]

Stephanie,

Apologies for the late response.  I finally get it.  I logged in to the free instructure.com site, looked for my course in Commons and realized what was going on!

Thanks!

Maryanne