Editing a Canvas Course offline for import into another course

[PatrickDickey]

Hi, everyone,

I exported one of my courses and would like to change it to another course (removing unnecessary files and assignments and making changes to the text). Is that possible, or do I have to import the content into the new course and change it on Canvas? The reason I didn't just do a straight copy inside of Canvas is that I don't want any updates made to the original course to affect the new course.

For clarification, I exported my "CIS-606 Visual Basic I" course and want to edit it and import it into my "NET-420 Introduction to Linux OS" course. I only needed two or three pages from the original course but had to export the entire course.

Thank you and have a great day. 🙂
Patrick.

[brpotts · Accepted solution]

Hi @PatrickDickey,

Great question! You can select the specific content that you'd like to import from the "CIS-606 Visual Basic I" course export package. I've linked a guide below that will you walk you through the steps to accomplish this: 
How do I select specific content as part of a course import?

Please let us know if you have additional questions after reading through the link documentation.

[Chris_Hofer]

@PatrickDickey ...

As another option, you could ask your school's Canvas administrator to make you an empty "sandbox" course shell.  Then, copy/import the entire course into that "sandbox" course.  Make all of your edits in the "sandbox" course, and then copy/import from the "sandbox" course into your new course.  This way, you aren't changing any of the content in your old course, and once you copy/import the contents from the "sandbox" course to your new course, you'll be pretty much ready to go...with the exception of making sure you have your course assignments, announcements, etc. configured the way you want and that your content and course is published close to or on the official start date of the course.

Hope this helps a bit!

[PatrickDickey]

Thank you both. I already have a "Sandbox" but I didn't realize that was what it was used for. I'm assuming that I can import different classes in there to edit them. Meaning, that if I import another course in, it will completely overwrite the one that's there now, with no effect on any courses that I've exported the content to.

Have a great day. 🙂
Patrick.

[Chris_Hofer]

@PatrickDickey ...

Importing a second course into your "sandbox" might actually add to existing content in that course.  So, if you are ok with resetting your "sandbox" course (essentially wiping out the contents) at any time, you could do that and then perform a new course import into your "sandbox".

How do I reset course content?