Is it possible for assignments to come over unpublished rather than published from a previous year's course to the current year's course?

[munozlee]

At the beginning of each year, when teachers are copying content from last year's courses into this year's courses - why does everything come over already published?  It seems it would make more sense if the content came over unpublished so that teacher could publish what they want their students to see at the beginning of the school year.  Most teacher do not want students to see the content for the entire year at the beginning of the school year.  Going through the entire course (times however many courses the teacher teaches)  and unpublishing assignments is time consuming and daunting for teachers during a busy time of the year.  Is there anyway this could be switched so that the assignments pass over unpublished?  Or is there a way to bulk unpublish assignments rather than going one by one? Thank you for your consideration!

[stuart_ryan · Accepted solution]

Hi Lee,

I have had a look on the forums to see if anyone had raised this idea in the past and it turns out they have!

• https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/14651 - Archived with zero votes
• https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/6708 - Archived with 32 votes
• https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/12025 - Archived with one vote
• https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/2465-importing-a-canvas-course-set-all-to-unpublished - OPEN FOR VOTING with currently 207 votes.

I would suggest you jump over to that last one and add your vote.

If you are technically inclined there are ways you could do this with some scripts, is that something that is up your alley (coding/scripting and the like)? If so, please let me know and I can share this with a group that can help give you some additional insights.

Hope that helps!
Stuart

[munozlee]

Hello.

I did vote as you suggested.  How many votes until something is considered?

Coding and scripting is not up my alley  - I would be looking to do this for my entire building (approximately 100 teachers).  I could look at having someone in our building to do the coding if it is not terribly time consuming.

Lee

[stuart_ryan]

Hi  @munozlee ,

These days the process is less about a hard number of votes and more a holistic consideration of a number of factors (of which community votes is one element). You can read more about the process by visiting What is the feature development process for Canvas?

If it is something you (or a colleague) hasn't done before, then the coding may take time, it also depends on the level of complexity, and I would suggest, doing it for 100 teachers, you would probably want to make it quite robust so it was re-usable (or controlled by a school technical admin).

It is certainly possible, but I wouldn't say it is easy on the complex scale.

Hope that helps!

Stuart