[Course Import/Export] Set all to unpublished when Importing

[acooper]

Hi,

When I import content from another course, I would like all assignments and other content to be unpublished by default. Currently, when I copy course content, I need to click through all of the content to unpublish them if they were published in the old course.

Thanks,

Adam

[doneng]

Problem statement:

We have a lot of teachers getting burned by the current way Canvas handles importing assignments from courses in previous terms. These are teachers that have a penalty in their grade books for missing work. Despite our instructions, teachers often don't clear (or shift) the due dates on assignments they import, so the assignments import with a due date in the past. Since assignments are imported in a published state (why, why why....?) the missing work penalty is automatically applied as soon as the assignment is imported.

Proposed solution:

I believe simply changing the default state for imported assignments to "unpublished" (OR giving district admins the ability to set this as the default state) would at least give teachers a fighting chance to adjust dates and not get dinged for missing the "Date Adjustment" step of the import process. Please consider making this an option we can set at the district level.

User role(s):

admin

[dbernert]

Problem statement:

When a course is copied over, everything that was previously published in the copied course is still set to be published when the new course goes live (e.g., modules, announcements, quizzes, etc.). This assumes the course can go live with no changes needed in the new course; the entire course should be published all at once when the new course goes live; and good instructors who work hard to keep their courses fresh should work harder. All really unrealistic. When everything is still live, instructors have to unpublish everything individually (e.g., modules, announcements, quizzes, etc.) before the course goes live. Also, pdf documents don't unpublish when you unpublish a module, so these documents need to be unpublished manually. All of this is really time consuming, especially for instructors who teach several fully online courses each semester using Canvas.

Proposed solution:

The best solution would be for Canvas to eliminate content from a copied course still being live automatically when moved into a new course. So new courses with copied content would not automatically have any published content (e.g., modules, announcements, quizzes, etc.). If that is not possible, we should have an Unpublish All Content option to unpublish all items in the course at once with just one click before the course goes live if we choose. Either of these would be a tremendous time saver.

User role(s):

instructor

[ortizf]

Problem statement:

Currently instructors face a lot of time consuming clicks when they are trying to hide announcements from when they have copied course content from previous courses is very time consuming and results in too much clicks by trying to delay posting which results in a time-consuming process especially for instructors who have many announcments copied over from previous semesters. https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-delay-posting-an-announcement-until-a-s...

Proposed solution:

The proposed solution would be to have a "hide" announcements with one click, so that instructors can hide announcements that they don't need or don't want to show up in the course. The why would be to save time for instructors and to reduce the process to as minimal clicks as possible.

User role(s):

instructor

[hutchimi]

Problem statement:

When copying content into a course, all content is made avaliable to students by default. This means that if done while a course is published it will make the wrong content avaliable to students.

Proposed solution:

Make it so that you can toggle the availability of content items when copying the course, making them appear in the new course as hidden from students once copied

User role(s):

admin

[DeteesWuber]

Problem statement:

Many teachers import all content from the previous semester at the start of the new semester. And it is not uncommon for students to already be taking part in the course at this point. To prevent students from seeing content that was published in the original course and now needs to be adapted, imported content should optionally be set to the status “unpublished” before it appears in the new course. Previously, this was only possible via the workaround of a sandbox course.

Proposed solution:

In the import settings, add the option to set the publication status of import content to “unpublished”. New import content can then be viewed and adapted at one's leisure before students can see it.

User role(s):

admin,instructor,ta