Is There a Way to Make a Set of Teacher-Created Discussion Threads Sticky and Copyable Quarter to Quater?

[mdiggs]

Hi Folks,

I do a number of discussions wherein I create several threads and students respond to one or more of them.  In some cases, the content I put in each thread is significant, a kind of jigsaw structure for students to choose 2-3 of 5 options for their own replies. In others, it's more like "sign up below for your choice of ..." kind of thing.  Either way, it is tedious to create these every quarter in every class (and sometimes in 4-5 different discussions over the quarter).

Is there a way for teachers to create in a single discussion assignment several sticky threads that copy over quarter to quarter?  Is there a hack that I'm missing or do folks do this sort of thing via some other method (like multiple discussions rather than a threaded discussion)?

Thanks,

Marylynne

[ProfessorBeyrer · Accepted solution]

I wonder @mdiggs if copying course content from class to class within Canvas answers your question. There are a couple of Canvas Guides documents that describe how to do this:

• How do I copy content from another Canvas course using the Course Import tool?
• How do I select specific content as part of a course import?

When Discussions are copied, the prompt is copied but none of the responses are.

You mention threaded discussions, and that makes me think you are writing replies to the prompt and students participate by replying to your replies. If so, then I'm afraid that tedium is what is in store. When I'm in a similar situation, I like to store my repetitive content in a Google Document so I can copy from there instead of copying from within Canvas.

I'm going to mark this reply as a solution but please write back if I missed your question.