Sharing top down sync course content between several courses

[Ewan_]

Hello,

We're about to undergo the transition from BB9 to Canvas, and I have a query about how a useful mechanism we (Learning Technologists) employ to distribute course content from one to many with live updating, can be replicated.

I have looked at the comparison doc on blueprints, templates etc and they seem to not quite fit the bill.

What we currently do:

Course content (mostly consisting of timetables, intro messages, links to download pdfs and embedded videos) are created and stored in the institutional content area of Blackboard, so not attached to any course. .html files are created to arrange the embedded videos with accompanying text, and provide links to the downloads of .pdfs hosted in the same area. Permissions are set appropriately to allow access to users from the desired desintation courses.

Within the courses, we build a folder structure, and insert "Items" where we want the html to display. The item then has a link in it, to the html file on the institutional content area. This displays the content in that Item space, rather than a web link.

With this method we can easily update content in a 1 - many process by changing the .html files. Much of the content is set before semsester starts, but as teaching runs, recorded lectures and lecture notes are added, and the resulting changes are displayed in all the live courses immediatly.

The courses all have a considerable amount of other content in them as well.

Is there a way to do similar in Canvas?

[BrianLester]

I'm not sure why blueprints won't work for you. I would try this in your beta instance. Permission management for content may be an issue.

With blueprints you can push content tom many courses while (depending on settings) allowing individual teachers to add their own content

You can also use a mixture of a blueprint and multi-section courses. Courses can have only one blueprint.

Content can also be pushed to courses using the Canvas API

[Ewan_]

Thanks for the response. I believe main reason why blueprints may not work for this is that some of the target courses take in content from more than one source. Access to blueprints may also be initially restricted in our organisation, but will have to see about that.

Perhaps we'll have to use individual Rise links per source, and update those on Articulate instead.

[Ewan_]

I was wondering if this process of embedding could be utilised from an on site ftp perhaps:

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-LMS-Blog/Embedding-an-Uploaded-HTML-page-in-an-iFrame/ba-p...

Otherwise not seeing anything other than the API that can help us here really. Inter course file sharing seems a bit of a missing feature for migrating BB users.