How do students access links from a copied course?

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Good morning, @yusymillancba!

Can you give Community members a bit more detail about your question?  For example, in your course, what kind of links are students having trouble accessing?  Are the links pointing to external websites (such as Google, Yahoo, etc.)?  Or, are your links pointing to other content within the course?  If the links are pointing to other content within the course, it may be that the links are actually going to other courses (if you are enrolled in them but students are not).  An easy way to confirm this is to use the link validator within your course.  How do I validate links in a course? - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)  Once you run that tool, are any of the links you're asking about showing up in the link validator report?  If so, then you need to fix those ... most likely re-creating the links to those items in your course.  For example, after running the link validator tool, it might tell you that it found links pointing to another course.  Sometimes people copy/paste links manually from one course to another, and that's not always a good thing.  While you, as the instructor, would have access to both courses, your students would not.  So, that is why checking for broken links is always good practice before a course begins.

*As a side note, the question text of "I copied a course but students are denied access to the link" should go in the body of your question rather than as a "tag".  Tags simply help the Community search box help find your question easier by using keywords you specify in the "tag" field.

Hopefully this will be of some help to you.  Sing out if you have any other questions about this...thanks!

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Good morning, @yusymillancba!

Can you give Community members a bit more detail about your question?  For example, in your course, what kind of links are students having trouble accessing?  Are the links pointing to external websites (such as Google, Yahoo, etc.)?  Or, are your links pointing to other content within the course?  If the links are pointing to other content within the course, it may be that the links are actually going to other courses (if you are enrolled in them but students are not).  An easy way to confirm this is to use the link validator within your course.  How do I validate links in a course? - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)  Once you run that tool, are any of the links you're asking about showing up in the link validator report?  If so, then you need to fix those ... most likely re-creating the links to those items in your course.  For example, after running the link validator tool, it might tell you that it found links pointing to another course.  Sometimes people copy/paste links manually from one course to another, and that's not always a good thing.  While you, as the instructor, would have access to both courses, your students would not.  So, that is why checking for broken links is always good practice before a course begins.

*As a side note, the question text of "I copied a course but students are denied access to the link" should go in the body of your question rather than as a "tag".  Tags simply help the Community search box help find your question easier by using keywords you specify in the "tag" field.

Hopefully this will be of some help to you.  Sing out if you have any other questions about this...thanks!

[yusymillancba]

Thank you for trying to help. Let's see if I can give clearer information.

I copied the complete content of a course. The homepage has links thata in the original course take students to different pages in the same course. For example, there is a link (from the homepage) that takes them to the assignments page. However, in the copied course, the link gives students an error message that says they have no permission to access that content. This is correct because they have access to the copied course, not the original one. So this is the question. How do I copy a course and activate the links?. Using the link validating tool does not make any difference. Thank you for reading me. And thanks in advance for your help.

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Hello there, @yusymillancba ...

Thanks for the additional explanation.  Normally, when you import (copy) course content from one course to another, it should automatically update links so that they are pointing to the correct course content and not any previous course content.  The fact that your students are still seeing an error message signals to me that you might have some links that are still not pointing correctly in your course.  Something you might want to check on your end is your course URL displayed at the top of your browser window.  Look at the Course ID number in the URL.  As an example:

https://SchoolName.instructure.com/courses/123456

Now, on your "Home" page, hover your mouse over one of the links in question.  Take a look at the bottom of your web browser, and you should see a URL displayed where that link is pointing to.  Does the same Course ID number you noted earlier display in the URL you are hovering over?  If not, then that is most likely the issue.  You would need to re-create any links where the Course ID numbers don't match up.  Otherwise, your students are probably going to have issues.

Keep Community members posted on this.  Thanks!

[yusymillancba]

Thank you very much for taking your time to help me with a solution to my issue.