So you have created a great course in Canvas, but the semester is over and you want to iterate on this course for the next semester. Canvas has a great tool called "Import Course Content" which allows you to bring your entire course to your empty new course. Importing an entire course will also bring in any personalization you have made, such as a course image or menu edits, alongside all your course content like files, modules, assignments, quizzes, and more. This allows you to save time as you don't have to redo all those pages, modules, and assessments and can focus your energy on improving the course.
Course Import Best Practices
Canvas has a feature called "Import Course Content" which allows you to bring your entire course to your empty new course. Importing an entire course brings in the personalizations you have made, such as a course image or menu edits, along with all your course content like files, modules, assignments, quizzes, and more. This saves time so you don't have to redo all the pages, modules, and assessments and can focus your energy on improving the course.
Canvas also allows you to bring in only certain items from your past course such as a midterm or a Welcome page. For example, you can import the amazing Welcome page you created for English 101 into your English 201 course so you only have to modify a few details instead of building a new course from the ground up.
Course Import Best Practices
- If you wish to import your entire course, only import the whole course once when the new course is empty. This will ensure that no changes are overwritten, no duplication occurs, and no grading is negatively impacted as there is unfortunately no undo button for the “Import Course Content” tool.
- Avoid re-importing the same quiz after making modifications as Canvas will merge your modified quiz with the imported quiz resulting in the reappearance of deleted questions and duplication of questions that were modified.
- If you use certain features such as file upload and Announcements during the semester, your course may become too large and filled with unwanted content after repeatedly importing. Consider doing a selective import and only choose the items that you wants and to reuse next semester.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at FTC@csun.edu.