[ARCHIVED] How do I tell if a course has content?

[andy_starr]

Hey all,

We've begun loading our online course templates to the Commons which has the potential to be a game changer as far as managing the content goes. Previously we had managed the content for all our courses as templates in a centralized way and then copied them individually to each course.

The instructors should pull down their courses from the "Approved" Template courses in the commons. This works well but as I'm sure you know some of our folks will wait until the last minute to grab their course. We'd like to head this off and run a report to determine if a course in a given semester has content or not.

We've been messing around with the delivered reports trying to work out which courses have content that should but the results have been hit and miss. Before we invest a ton of time in this I'd like to avoid reinventing the wheel. Does anyone have any thoughts around automated ways to tell if a course has content?

Thanks in advance,

Andy Starr

[tdelillo · Accepted solution]

Is the "Unused Courses" report not working for you? That is the report I use to find empty shells, and it has always seemed to do the trick.

[andy_starr]

Thanks Tracey,

I was looking for confirmation that "Unused Course" are the courses that are the empty templates.

--Andy

[robotcars]

Are you using Canvas Data at all?

I have a query that tracks courses that get loaded with our Commons content, by looking for a specified string in the wiki content. It could be adjusted to find courses that don't have content.

[andy_starr]

Hi Robert,

Yes we are looking to load our data portal files to our campus ODS.  Would you be willing to share the Query.

Thanks,

Andy

[robotcars]

Hi Andy,

I'm going need a bit of time to work that one out. Keep me updated on your ODS process and I'll try and pass it off to you in time. Below is a post with some queries on finding courses with content, not the same. I will probably start by looking for courses with 0 files and 0 wiki pages.

https://community.canvaslms.com/thread/23039-possible-to-see-course-locations-where-uploaded-files-a...