Duplicate, Clone, or Copy anything in Canvas

[jthoms]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

An option to "make a copy" should be present on nearly every gear in Canvas -- modules, quizzes, assignments, announcements, pages, discussions, rubrics...

Consistency is an important element of good course design, and this would help instructors and designers achieve it more easily.

Ideas related to this have been developed and depoyed

This idea was completed through the Khaki 2017: Priorities & Related Ideas. 

Here are the content items that were completed as part of Khaki

- Module Item Duplication: Canvas Production Release Notes (2017-11-18) 

- Module Duplication: Canvas Production Release Notes (2018-06-23) 

- Assignment Duplication: Canvas Production Release Notes (2017-07-15) 

- Discussion Duplication: Canvas Production Release Notes (2017-10-28) 

- Page Duplication: Canvas Production Release Notes (2017-07-15) 

You can read more about Khaki in What in the world does “Khaki” have to do with Canvas?‌

*We know that the ability to copy a rubric from the rubric manager does not currently exist, but we have elected to mark this idea as complete anyways.  If copying a rubric is something that you think should be developed, please add your comment and vote to https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/5167" modifiedtitle="true" title="Copy a rubric.

[cay_horstmann]

Duh.

It boggles the mind why this hasn't been implemented ages ago.

[siglinde]

anybody having an idea how to deal with this issue?

[siglinde]

sorry, the "reply function" has not worked where I expected.

quote of the issue here:

hello,

I would like to have the students duplicate in an easy way (i.e. without having to deal with HTML) a forum post template that disposes their comments in a predefined way.

we have 4 working languages, so my template would basically be a table/boxes with 4 little icons to indicate which language goes where.

students would then be able to fill the boxes or to leave them empty (padding frames would show then only the parts of the template that are needed).

is there a way to do something like that?

can one have a predefined default content showing up when opening the rich-text-editor? or is it possible to add a button there to insert that previously saved template?

here is an example (the not displaying pictures would be the icons - I suppose I must otherwise enable the "view course files" link for the students to be able to copy-paste them?):

insert LSF video	insert ASL video
Objectif :	Aim:

[Renee_Carney]

siglinde​

It looks like you have not gotten a response and may be trying to repost?  You might want to post your question to Find Answers​.  If our awesome community is not able to answer your question or find a solution for you there they may help you propose an idea where you can then submit a new feature idea for voting.  The feature idea you are commenting on was too large for tracking and communication and has been broken into many manageable ideas.  You can find out more about writing a feature idea at How do I create a new feature idea?​

[talagad]

It's clear that Instructure has very little regard for the people who actually use their system.  The trouble is that the users (Faculty, Students) are not the ones who make the decision about which LMS to use. Instructure realizes that user needs are less important than the needs of the administrators who decide for the whole institution which LMS to use. Instructure's development resources seem to be focussed on implementing third party needs.

Can anyone point to a recent user feature request that was implemented? That didn't involve third party integration?

[kona]

 @talagad ​, while I totally 100% agree about the need for the ability to copy things in Canvas, there are numerous (upon numerous) user feature ideas that have been recently implemented.

Check out - Tis the Season in Community & Tis the Season in Community: Act 2 - as well as pretty much every product release for at least the last 3-6 months (Canvas Release Notes).

[Stef_retired]

 @talagad ​, I have yet to encounter a company--not just an educational software company, but any company--that cares about its users and listens to them more than Instructure. In addition to the links  @kona ​ has provided you (and you can always filter feature ideas by "completed" status to see for yourself), I'd invite you to read about the extraordinary event that took place in the company's offices in late March 2015: Project Khaki: How Instructure and the Canvas Community Connected  Participants in that event gained unique insights into how Canvas's development resources are allocated, and the company remains exceptionally transparent about that process. Every month Instructure publishes a tree map with its resource allocation for the upcoming month, and you can examine those in Canvas Studio​ : Canvas Development Resources Allocation

Personally, although I haven't noticed that implementation of feature ideas skews toward third-party needs, and I don't think any empirical evidence would support that contention, I would welcome that (and I'm a teacher and a sometime student, not an admin or an LMS decision maker), because if something already exists that does something well, I'd rather see it integrated into Canvas than have Canvas spend its limited resources on reinventing the wheel.

[BradMoser]

I have suggested a couple features requests and I have had two fulfilled. One included third party integration about Google Docs and Speedgrader. The other did not include third party integration... sort quiz statistics by section...this idea has now come to fruition and you can now sort quiz statistic by section. So far, I have had positive communication when viewing ideas.

Now would I also love to see more of these good ideas developed. Always! So I share in your sentiment about ensuring we are focusing on teachers and students usability and not just admin or 3rd party.

[Renee_Carney]

 @talagad ​

I'm sorry that you feel this way.  I can assure you that we are dedicated to the broad spectrum of users that we serve!  Kona, Stefanie, and Bradley have shared a lot of information.  I have a couple more resources that may help.

Our Product Team provided an excellent webinar in October where they shared insight to their product development process and how the Community Feature Idea process fits into it.

• ​

The following guides highlight the Feature Idea process:

• How does the voting process work for feature ideas?​
• What is the feature development process for Canvas?

As Kona mentioned above, our Canvas Release Notes​ identify feature ideas that were requested through the Community.

• Example:  Canvas Production Release Notes (2016-01-09)​
  • If you Scroll down to New Canvas UI > Dashboard Cards you will see there is a note at the bottom of the feature description that says
    This feature was originally suggested by the Canvas Community.

[SethBattis]

I'm in the midst (have been for several months) of making a major architectural shift in my canvas hacks, with a plugin manager for all the hacks in my CanvasHack project. So… heads up that the video above is still truthful, but that I'm hopefully making things (that I've written) a little easier to work with.

I plan to be running a version of CanvasHack on our school's live instance by the end of the month, if not sooner.