Copying an entire course

[MadisonRyan]

My goal is to keep my Canvas Course after the school year ends, so I can pull resources for the next year. I hate having to start over. I want it to be as simple as importing from a saved course. I was told my only solution would be to export it and save it to the computer. 

Is it possible to copy the ENTIRE course to the commons so I don't lose it? I already created a new course and imported everything into it in hopes that it'll stay even when my old courses disappear. 

[SusanNiemeyer]

If you will be staying at the same school, you could "import" the course into a "sandbox" course. A "sandbox" course just means a development course provided by your school. When you "import" the content, make sure that you click on the box to remove the dates.

Canvas Commons is really intended as a way for you to share your course materials with others, not as a way to save course content. I've never bothered with it. I don't even use "sandbox" courses. Instead, I simply import the course content from the old course into a new course shell every semester. 

The only caveat if if you change schools. Then you'll lose access to the course content that you've created. In that case, you will also run into issues with Canvas Commons if you use the privacy settings. Your old login won't work. If this is the case, then I'd suggest exporting the course content and saving it on your hard drive.

[MadisonRyan]

See, our courses disappear every year for confidentiality. (I assume that's why). I had created a new course and imported everything. However, I didn't get rid of the dates. Is creating a course the same as a sandbox? I remember at my first school, I had a literal course provided called "Sandbox", but I don't now.

[Ron_Bowman]

@MadisonRyan -

In addition to what @SusanNiemeyer and @Chris_Hofer mentiioned, my suggestion would be to propose an idea to your School Administrators/Canvas Admins that you would like to have a Master Course or Parent Course setup for each course you teach.  that Master/Parent course is like a template - you put in all of your work for a particular course that you want to copy into your new course each semester.  That way, as the course evolves, you tweak the parent course.  They will have to make this parent course permanent, but it solves the issue of disappearing courses.

This concept is used at my institution.

Ron

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi @MadisonRyan ...

In addition to the information you got from @SusanNiemeyer, here are some additional resources for you.  If you are going to copy/import course content from one course to another, make sure that you are logged into the empty course shell first.  You will then be selecting the course that has the content in it to copy/import into the blank course shell.  You can use these written/video Guides:

• Course Content Import (Instructors)
• How do I copy content from another Canvas course using the Course Import tool?

I also agree with Susan that Commons isn't typically used for storing courses...though I suppose it could be done...but keeping in mind the things that Susan mentioned.  Commons is more of a repository of loads of different course content that you want to share with others at your school...or with the wider Canvas population.  So, if you publicly shared your course to Commons, anyone could import it into their own course.  But, this would be one way to import it into a new course if, for example, you had moved to another school.  There are probably better ways to do this...as Susan has described.  You could export your course, download the export, and then import it into a different school's Canvas environment.

• How do I export a Canvas course?
• How do I import a Canvas course export package?

Susan's idea of saving things to a sandbox course is a good idea, too.  Or, if you don't have a Free For Teachers Canvas account, you could create one and then use the Guides I've provided above to export your course and import it into your FFT course...keeping in mind that you only have 500 MB of space to use in FFT courses.

Hopefully these ideas that we've shared will be of some help to you.  Sing out if you have any other questions...thanks!