[ARCHIVED] Linking between courses, a good idea - Yes or No?

[dearne_willing]

Hi there

I have had a request from a teacher to create a qualification Home course and then use this Home course to link out to separate courses. The separate courses would be each individual units of the qualification. I thought I would ask this group if anyone sees any implications with this setup.

From my mock-up of this design the links worked well from one course to the other, since the user would be logged into Canvas they would access the other courses ok. Some units are included within other qualifications, so I can see how this design would work linking to other courses/units from other qualifications Home courses. Also, only updating unit content once and have it flow through where the unit/course is linked.

Canvas’s test Student View does not allow viewing another course linked to the course previewing student view. I tested my mock up with a demo student and all looked ok.

My concerns were the student and teacher experience with this set-up. With teacher/student education and induction students could remove the unit/individual courses from their Dashboard and only access via the Home course.

Our RTO have been utilising Blueprints successfully for many courses, however; this situation requires further customised features that Blueprints do not allow currently, e.g. selecting items from a Blueprint to sync (currently the whole course syncs). 

Does anyone see any implications of the course design or have linked between courses?

Regards

Dearne

[sadenniston]

Hi Dearne:

Two years ago we did what you have described with some success, but there a few pain points. If students are using the app, going from a course into which they are enrolled into a linked course would display the linked course as though it were a browser page rather than one displayed through the Canvas app.

There are also issues with files and how they are accessed by students. They make the assumption that when clicking on Files in the enrolled course, they will able to see all files, even though a file may reside on the linked course. It gets messy...

It's also not possible to link a file from a linked course into an enrolled course.

Blueprint is a better option in that it puts the content into the enrolled course rather than linking to it.