Copy an Assignment

[jthoms]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

  Idea will be open for vote Wed. July 1, 2015 - Wed. October 7, 2015  Learn more about voting...

A good instructional design practice is to have a predictable module structure for students to follow throughout a course. Assignments often have consistent options and text (ie: honor code statements) throughout a course.

Currently copying requires creating a new assignment, and copying content for each item. By adding a “copy” option to the options gear, the effort to build a course will be greatly reduced. If this triggered a dialogue to state how many copies to make, it would be very simple to quickly build out a course structure.

Please help to flesh out this idea by discussing your particular use case in the comments.

Edit: taking quizzes out of this request -- please vote and comment at Duplicate Quizzes

Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the Canvas Production Release Notes (2017-07-15) 

[brendaa]

This would be very helpful.  We encourage low-stakes quizzing and assignments.  In some cases these are handled in class so the ability to quickly create multiple quizzes or assignments that would show up in Quizzes, Assignments, Calendar and Grade Center would be great.

[scottdennis]

This feature idea is now open for voting.

[janejump]

This would be a really helpful feature for our Nursing classes who assignment Weekly Log Sheets for students to submit. The assignment is essentially the same each week, but they are each graded so they need to be set up as individual assignments. Every semester the Nursing faculty will call and ask if assignments can be copied (definition of insanity?!). This would be a huge timesaver!

[lbenaloh]

I would LOVE to be able to copy assignments.  Many of my assignments are essentially the same, with only minor differences.  Sometimes I have the exact same assignment wording multiple times.  I've used Question Banks to help with duplicate quizzes, but have been very frustrated to not be able to copy assignments.  If we can copy assignments between courses, why can't we copy them within a course?

[mniehaus]

You've articulated everything I would have said.   Thank you

[zetlan_berkeley]

I want my students to attend a meeting on campus several times during the semester, and then do a write-up of the meeting each time.  Therefore, the assignment is essentially the same each time, but I have to create the assignment from scratch each time I add it to our calendar.  It's a big waste of time. 

[bbroniak]

We also have gotten requests for being able to copy/duplicate a quiz.  A use case here is when setting up a quiz for someone that needs an accommodation...and only making minor tweaks to the quiz and/or settings for the quiz.  It's different enough that you need a separate copy, but close enough that recreating the entire quiz is too much effort.  Unless there is a better way to handle this situation?

[jthoms]

I'd bet this is a very common use case. Thanks for thinking to share it, bbroniak​!

Currently, the workflow would be to export the content and re-import. I'd also suggest that sharing the quiz to Canvas Commons wouldn't make much sense in this case either.

[lbenaloh]

Another possibility, rather than exporting it and re-importing it, would be to use the "unfiled" question bank, but that would be a pain.  Sometimes I've resorted to creating a dummy class (just once), copying the quiz into that dummy class, making changes, then copying it back.

[Renee_Carney]

Hi  @jthoms ​

There is a feature idea for " modifiedtitle="true" title="Duplicate Quizzes that we must have missed when we moved yours forward.  Your idea does have very specific details on where the copy/duplicate function should exist, but I'm confident you can add that to the comments of Duplicate Quizzes thread.

I would like to narrow this thread down to only copying assignments. Then if/when this feature is looked at by product we can make sure to provide transparent and accurate information on stage tracking.  When we have two features (assignments & quizzes) melded together it is difficult to clearly communicate if one is at a different stage than the other.

Please let me know if you would like to edit this feature idea or if you are ok with me modifying it.

Thank you.