How can I ensure photos/graphics don't break for students when I copy courses?

[L11ghtman]

We run repeat courses for new student cohorts every few months. Typically, I'll just copy a course and change the start/end/assignment dates. The content copies over no problem, but increasingly, I'm running into a problem where media links (photos/graphics, primarily JPEGs but also sometimes video files) don't work in student view because they're copied from a course the new student cohort doesn't have permission to view. Frustratingly, as a designer, I don't see this issue because I obviously have access to all of our courses, so I have to check every page in student view to see if graphics/videos work or not.

Is there a way to ensure that graphics (file content, both image and video, but also links occasionally) work for students when I copy courses? If I have to manually re-upload media every time I copy a course, it sort of defeats the purpose. Is there a way to make sure it works every time?

[CindiKerns · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I know this can be frustrating. There are a couple of things to check. Do you use the course import tool? We often use the "select specific content" option because we don't want to copy old announcements. Are the files in the original course or in a professor's personal Canvas files? Are you copying HTML? If so, the links to resources will not be updated - you'll need to do that manually. 

[CindiKerns · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I know this can be frustrating. There are a couple of things to check. Do you use the course import tool? We often use the "select specific content" option because we don't want to copy old announcements. Are the files in the original course or in a professor's personal Canvas files? Are you copying HTML? If so, the links to resources will not be updated - you'll need to do that manually. 

[PatriciaRoy · Accepted solution]

We run the link validator after course copies to make sure everything imports properly. Also, we make sure all media is uploaded as a document, image, etc. Some instructors just copy a link into the RCE when it really needs to be uploaded.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi @L11ghtman ...

I agree with @PatriciaRoy.  You should run the link validation tool within these courses.  It will tell you if there are issues where content is being linked outside of the course...such as course images.  How do I validate links in a course?

[Sue_Stone]

I agree with @CindiKerns. If you are copying content and not the files, it will break the images as it is trying to grab the image from the original course.