Copying Course between Domains

[EmilyJensen1]

I work for a school district that uses Canvas, and build courses in Canvas regularly using my school district account.  This summer I'm going to teaching a course at a university that also uses Canvas, and my account with the University won't be active until right before the quarter begins.  I'd like to build course content in my school district account, export it, and then import it to my university account.  Or, do a similar process that won't result in any loss of content.  Can you advise on what the best way might be to make that happen?

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Hi there, @EmilyJensen1 ...

You can export your course content using this Guide: How do I export a Canvas course?

Then, when you are ready to import that file into the University's Canvas environment, you'll want to follow these instructions: How do I import a Canvas course export package? 

Do you think this will help for your needs?

[Gabriel33]

First concern is whether there are LTIs or options that your school district uses, but the University doesn't. For example, if your school has DesignPlus but the University doesn't, then any pages you make with their tools may not work.
This may show up even within "vanilla" Canvas, where there are Classic Quizzes vs New Quizzes: my University only enabled the New Quizzes this year, some Universities have already blocked Classic Quizzes, and others may still not have New Quizzes enabled. Luckily, these can usually be converted, for most types of questions (see  How do I migrate a Canvas quiz to New Quizzes? - Instructure Community - 991  for some details)

But assuming that there are no issues with different features, it is possible to export a course as a zipped archive, and then re-import it in the new Canvas instance:
Instructions on exporting:  How do I export a Canvas course? - Instructure Community - 785  
Instructions on importing:  How do I import a Canvas course export package? - Instructure Community - 795 

You can also try building the course in a Free For Teachers account, which lacks some features (such as New Quizzes), but would avoid you having to ask for a Sandbox course at your district.

[dbrace]

Hi @EmilyJensen1,

Along with everything that @Chris_Hofer and @Gabriel33 said, if you are planning on regularly teaching both now and in the future at multiple institutions that use Canvas, you might want to consider using Canvas Free for Teachers.

If you do, try to keep your course designs as generic as possible because the institutions that you are affiliated with might (and probably do) have different features and functionality enabled or disabled.

In Canvas FFT:

1. I would not use it for your actual courses
2. you can create your own "sandbox" or "development" courses
3. import content in from and export content out off all three instances of Canvas

-Doug