Creating a new course then copying an existing course into it

[eecmaeoe]

1. How do I create a new, free Canvas Instructure account?  
2. Then, copy an existing course into that new account (without losing the active users)?

[Stef_retired · Accepted solution]

Hi,  @eecmaeoe ‌, to create a Free For Teachers account, click on the Get a Free Canvas Account button at Instructure : Try Canvas. Once you've created the account, this resource should help : Free-for-Teacher Account FAQ  After creating a course in the account, you would then follow the instructions in How do I export a Canvas course? and https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-12783-415241324 to bring the course content over to your new course. Keep in mind that Free For Teachers has a course size limit of 250mb, so if your course is larger than that, you'd want to modify it first before embarking on the export-import process.

Active users cannot be copied from one institution to another, and they are not included in a course copy or import. If you would like to set up the same course in your Free For Teachers account, you'll need to create user accounts in the free instance for each of the students and enroll them in the course.

[eecmaeoe]

Thank you for the reply, Stefanie. I had contracted somebody to help build an asynchronous course for a nonprofit organization offering a certification.  They created the course in their account and we allowed people to start the course in which they have 5 years to complete the program.  There are currently 100 users.  The contractor wants the course off their account.  

Should I resend an invitation to everyone and just manually enter the grades they had?  Or  like you said, enter their account information - but would they still need a new link to access the course?  Is there a way to export user information from the original course into my account with the copied course?  

Thanks for any help you or anyone can provide.

Cindy

[Stef_retired]

 @eecmaeoe ‌, the Free For Teachers course will be in the canvas.instructure.com instance with its own URL and so requires users to authenticate into a different Canvas instance. So you'll need to enroll them and invite them to the new course.

While you can't export/import user information along with a course import, there's a nice feature in New Analytics that allows an instructor to download a list of students' email addresses in a csv (click on New Analytics and then on the download icon at the right of the Weekly Online Activity chart to download a .zip file that includes a students.csv) to assist in the re-enrollment process. See the Export Table CSV section of https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-17997-41521081670 for details.

Once they've been enrolled, you would manually enter their grades.

[eecmaeoe]

Good.  Thanks again, Stefanie.  I exported the student grades to my desktop.   

Now, for my course that I need to create ... Do I Import or Copy Course Content into my course?  I really cannot tell the difference.  I want to make sure that I am totally separate from the contractor's development account.  

Lastly, the 250 mb capacity ... is that per course? In total?  Where can I find how many mb I have used?

Thanks again.  I feel that I'm getting closer to making the plunge.

Cindy

[Stef_retired]

 @eecmaeoe ‌:

(1) Use the Import Content option. The Copy Course Content is for copying from another course in the same instance.

(2) The 250MB figure represents the total course storage available. The best way to approach this is to navigate to the original course's Files area, which is where you'll see how much space you've used; it's at the very bottom of that page. If the original course is larger than 250MB, you'll need to pare it down by deleting content before initiating the export. Videos are a known consumer of space, and many instructors choose to host them externally and link out instead of uploading the video file directly into the course.

Good luck!

[eecmaeoe]

Hi Stefanie,

Almost there...

Hopefully last question for awhile. Do I need to export the original file

before importing it into the new one?

Cindy

On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 12:15 PM Stefanie Sanders <instructure@jiveon.com>

[Stef_retired]

 @eecmaeoe ‌, here's how I would do it:

• Create (or request) a sandbox course shell in your current Canvas instance
• Copy the course you want to move into that sandbox course (How do I copy a Canvas course into a new course shell?) 
• Clean up the course, if necessary, to bring it under the 250mB storage limit
• Export the course into an .imscc file (How do I export a Canvas course?) 
• Create a course in Free For Teachers
• Import the .imscc into the new FFT course (How do I import a Canvas course export package?)