Copying a course in Canvas

[MaisonaveLeyzia]

I am copying a course into my new shell course.  When I go into setting to copy the course, should I be in the shell course I am copying into or in the course that I am copying from?

[SusanNiemeyer · Accepted solution]

I recommend that you start from new shell course. Then you can "import" the content from the old course into the course.

When you import, I highly recommend that you remove the dates. Otherwise, all of the assignments will have the old dates. There is also an option to "shift" the dates. This has not worked as well for me.

When you import, you can choose the option to import "selected" content. I highly recommend that. I bring over my modules, but not old announcements or calendar events. If you import your modules, everything in the modules will transfer over. You don't need to separately select Pages, Assignments, and the like. 

I would strongly recommend importing all of the content you might need into the new course shell before you publish the new course shell. Remember that all of the published items from the old course will come over as published items. You'll need to unpublish everything.***

Once you've gotten your course underway, be careful about "importing" or "copying" content because you can inadvertently overwrite items that you want. I recently came across a teacher who made the grave error of wiping out of her entire current course when she only wanted to import one item. (She had imported the entire course instead). Luckily, she was able to restore much of the lost content, but this put her in panic mode.

*** HAVING TO "UNPUBLISH" EVERY ITEM ONE BY ONE IS A MAJOR HEADACHE. I WISH THE CANVAS DEVELOPERS WOULD FIX THIS ISSUE. DEATH BY A THOUSAND CLICKS.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi @MaisonaveLeyzia ...

In addition to the information you received from @SusanNiemeyer, I wanted to pass along the Guides for you that she referenced in her instructions...in case you would like these to look at:

• How do I copy content from another Canvas course u... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)
• How do I select specific content as part of a cour... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

Susan is correct, though, that when you import course content you want to be logged into an empty course shell...as you will be importing (copying) content into that empty course shell from an existing course that already has content in it.

Hope this helps!