[Groups] Copy Group Settings

[donaldjo]

Group settings should be included when doing a course copy or Import.

I have a course which relies heavily on an intricate set of groups tied to assignments (it's a negotiations course) so I need to be able to copy the course over from term to term in complete form. Currently whenever I copy the course, the groups are all lost, as well as the tying of groups to the appropriate assignments. Re-creating the groups and then re-tying them to assignments takes an incredible amount of time.

Comments from Instructure

The Canvas Production Release Notes (2015-06-27) indicate that importing a course with group assignments now brings the group assignment settings to the new course; however, upon testing the group structures within a group set do not come with it.  For this reason we will keep this feature idea open for voting.  We will continue testing and update this post as soon as we have more information.

Course Settings and Grading Schemes

Importing Course Settings from a Canvas course export package also imports the grading scheme.

Explanation: When a user imported selective course content from a Canvas export package, the grading scheme was not included in the import. Importing the entire course was not affected. This behavior occurred because Canvas was not verifying grading standard copies if it was part of selected content. Canvas code has been updated to import the course grading scheme when part of selected course content.

[lbrem]

We would love the group info to copy over.  We have a january term class with 7 separate courses that all use the same structure and we usually copy one course site to the rest. We have to re-create the group structure in each with Canvas and this is quite a lot of work!

[RobDitto]

Deactivated user​, belated thanks for this list; I just now noticed it.  I really like everything in the list, and I hope that instructors can also select and copy the same sets/groups/assignment associations using "Copy a Canvas Course" in the Import Tool (in addition to export packages, which I assume is what is covered by "when I export"/"exported groups", etc.). 

[allison]

Just a quick update that any improvements to groups or course import/export behavior will likely be postposed for at least six months while we focus on other product initiatives. Please continue to post your ideas around this but we'll need to archive the idea for now.

[iys2]

We have many courses where we use groups and tie them to assignments. When we copy a course from term to term the group sets do not copy over, so we need to go in and create new group sets. Unfortunately when this happens all of the connections to the assignments are also broken, so it takes that much longer to make sure there are no gaps. Similar to what has already been mentioned. And, when the same instructor does not teach the course from semester to semester this can become troublesome. I have voted on this feature previously, but just wanted to comment on this as well, since I am in the middle of dealing with this now. As we continue to transition our large portfolio of courses, this is going to become more problematic as this process is not sustainable.

I can totally understand regarding the need to focus on higher priority items, and appreciate the assistance with this. Although, I truly hope that this feature will be reconsidered as soon as time permits.

[emily]

Definitely interested in this feature! Any updates on when this might come up in the queue?

[tdurbin]

We need this as well, need to be able to copy group sets forward with the rest of the course materials & content. Please provide this!

[iys2]

@Allison Weiss

As we continue transitioning our courses into Canvas, this is becoming more challenging for us to manually update from semester to semester. Any word on when this may be looked at again? Any information you can provide on this would be most appreciated. -- Thank you.

[awarmar]

I'm always so sad when my searches reveal a needed feature not Canvas that has received the needed votes...only to realize its archived (indefinitely?...) ...time to start re-doing work I didn't know was futile when done in my development shells

[skelling]

I, and many of my colleagues, (see  recently archived thread here: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/6392?commentID=57827#comment-57827) would also find this feature very helpful.  I am hopeful that it will be implemented in the future. 

[lucas_faule]

It would be very useful the export package includes the groups sets. Ours universities have a content production area that creates what we called "master courses". These master courses have an instructional design applied that needs to work with group activities, such as assignments or forums.

Besides, we are working with a workaround, suggested by Instructure, to isolate sections, because we need that forums posts be just in section environment and not visible to the whole course. This workaround implies the creation of a group for every section that is created, generating a logical association between them, and creating a membership for each student every time the student is enrolled in the associated section. So, we need in every course, at least one group set. Because groups sets are not exported, content production areas cannot configurate groups activities in the master course. They have to configure the group feature in production course, for every course, in every academic period (term), despite of the master course content has not changed!!

So, we hope, this feature be included as soon as possible in order to avoid heavy manual work.

Thanks.