Copy courses while retaining group types and group names

[Jonan]

I created a course in the Canvas learning management system. The course has several types of groups. It has discussion groups. It has team project groups. It has pair concept mapping groups. I set each group up such that it has a unique name. For example, the discussion groups are flower names (e.g., "rose group", "daffodil group", etc.) and the team project groups have tree names (e.g., "oak group", "pine group", etc.). The problem is when I copy the course to a new semester, all the group names are lost. Also, the different types of groups are lost, and the association of assignments with those groups is lost. How can I copy a canvas course in a way that keeps all the groups intact?

[james_whalley · Accepted solution]

Hello @Jonan,

Unfortunately, there is no way to copy groups/group sets between courses. There is a feature idea for this, so I would recommend keeping an eye on that to see if there is any movement.

Regards,

James

[Jonan]

This was useful information (thank you, James!), but it should not be marked as a "solution" since no solution has yet been offered.

[Jonan]

Thank you. I saw that feature idea but there has been no movement on it for nearly a decade. Someone must have figured out how to do it, since it appears that Instructure is not planning to do anything about it...?

[james_whalley]

Not yet. The theme this idea is under thou was selected for prioritization in January 2024. It was selected because "it’s strongly aligned with our desire to support large courses and non-traditional use cases. We aim to streamline existing processes and introduce new functionality to save users time." So, maybe it means they'll have some update soon?