FAST & EASY Way to Copy Content on the FLY

[clong]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For details, please read through the Canvas Release Notes (2020-01-18) and Canvas Release: Direct Share‌

A couple of years ago in a community far, far away...

I submitted a feature idea to Copy content into multiple courses at once. This feature was marked as completed with the 2016 May update made to Canvas Commons and it does accomplish what was asked for, but we want something more awesome than that.

During the time it took to vote on the idea and fully implement it, we had lots of great use cases and sub-ideas that kind of got lost in translation. It turns out that a lot of Canvas users create course assignments, announcements, discussions, quizzes on the fly and they want a FAST & EASY way to send all that to multiple courses all at once. To do this using the current commons workflow it takes 23 clicks, 2 text entry fields, an image selection and some waiting. And then you still have to go back and adjust your assignment groups and due dates!

Teachers from K-landia to Academia would all love it if this could be accomplished with less than 3 clicks and take no longer than 1 second. Here's how one popular system does this.

Let's up the Awesome and FLY!

Reference: Copy an Assignment , Copy a Discussion , Copying assignments from one class to another without using the commons.

Comments in completed feature idea: Copy to multiple courses

[Stef_retired]

For anyone interested in this topic, be sure to RSVP to the CanvasLIVE event Ask Me Anything: Kate McGee, Product Manager, Commons+Content, which is coming up on Thursday, October 20, 2016. Kate is going to be answering questions about Canvas Commons, master courses, templates, and the content authoring tools in Canvas--and, well, anything! If you’re interested, but your schedule doesn’t allow you to attend in real time, RSVP "no" or "maybe" so you can receive any post-event updates.

[michael_hornbac]

This is probably a different feature, but very similar in nature. Teachers who teach the same subjects or classes have the challenge of having to constantly upload items to Commons to share items with like teachers. How much easier would it be to be able to select the icon in the module setting and be able to share with another teacher in your school or district?

Perhaps I should just write this up!

[dopitz]

I would like to be able to easily add an assignment or quiz to other courses.  I know this is an option through importing and exporting, but a lot of my classes share some similar assignments or quizzes.  If I'm creating a master course while teaching a class, it would be nice to be able to create an assignment or quiz in the master course and click a button to push it to the other course without having to go through the whole import process under settings.  This would make course development much easier.

[ekennedy]

Having a way to easily copy to another course would be great! possibly a check box, list, etc.

[ssimpso4]

I'm happy to state that this functionality is now a development priority, as determined by a mix of K-12 and Higher Ed users at this week's Project Khaki '17 event! Democracy in action!

[clong]

Great News! Thanks for sharing this ssimpso4

[Renee_Carney]

Check out Canvas Release: Blueprint Courses in the Canvas Beta Release Notes (2017-06-12).  There are solutions in this new feature that apply to this feature idea!

[clong]

Thanks for the update, I read through the release notes and can see how this will be beneficial for Canvas admins. When I first requested this years ago, the intent was misunderstood and we were told Commons was a solution to do this. On this rerequest I tried to show why that does not work well for a typical teacher using Canvas as part of a blended learning class where much of the course content is developed on the fly as the year progresses.

What I meant by fast & easy can be seen in this example here and I think this should be accomplished with less than 3 clicks and take no longer than 1 second. I don't think the blueprint feature hits any of these marks allowing teachers do this as described. Don't get me wrong, Blueprints will be a welcomed and useful feature that has many use cases! I just hope that there is something else in the works to specifically and fully address the feature idea I proposed.

[Renee_Carney]

Agree, Chris!

This new feature will not make copying and duplication easier, however it will allow tempting, which has it's advantages for course building as well!

[Renee_Carney]

 @clong ‌

Take a look here!  Canvas Production Release Notes (2017-07-15) 

So far it's just duplication of pages an assignments, but are we getting closer?