Processes for Reusing a Canvas Site

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These instructions will walk you through copying an existing Canvas course’s content so that it can be used in the current term, as well as the follow-up (or clean-up) steps that you may need to complete, depending on the components of the course site.

Important Note: If you are taking over a course that was previously taught by a different faculty member you will need to ask the owner of the course to grant you access permissions to any external resources that are used in the course (for example, Google Drive, OneDrive, Panopto, Flip, etc.).

Important Note: If you are making changes to a fully online, asynchronous course developed in partnership with DLINQ for use in a fully online program, please also refer to the guidance provided on the Making Changes to Online Asynchronous Courses page.

Topics

Steps to Take to Copy Canvas Site and Prepare for Launch

This step will create the new Canvas site shell and will link it to the enrollments for your course. Follow these steps to complete this process.

  1. Go to your new Canvas course site.
  2. Follow these instructions to import your Canvas content from a previous term into the Canvas site for the new term. This import will only include content. All student data will stay in the previous version of the course.
  3. We recommend that during the import process you choose to remove due dates, and that you do a select import that does not include calendar content such as any previous Zoom meetings that were set up using Zoom in Canvas.

When you import one course into another, during the import process, there is an option to modify or remove the due dates and availability dates. You can follow these instructions to use the Design Plus multi-tool Due Date Modifier to update the due dates from one spot.

For instructors teaching courses for Middlebury Institute Online only: MIO policy is that courses should be available to students the Friday before the semester starts (which is typically on a Monday). Your Canvas course term start date will need to be manually adjusted to meet this requirement.  Follow these instructions to change the term start date.

If you used an external tool such as Flip, Hypothes.is, GoReact, Google suite, etc., you may need to take steps to ensure that those tools continue to work in your new course site. Please refer to detailed instructions below for steps for each tool.

Resource / Tool Dependencies (only applies if you use the named resource)

Copying a Flip assignment from one course to another can be a complex process. If you would like to copy a Flip assignment, please contact us at dlinq@middlebury.edu for further assistance.

If you embed/use GoogleDrive documents in your Canvas site for collaboration purposes you should be sure to create them in a shared drive so that access to the documents can be controlled by granting access to the drive to another faculty member. Items saved in individual Google Drive folders will be lost if that person leaves Middlebury. Individuals can also transfer ownership of Google drive items to another person, however that has to be done at both the folder and individual file level. A folder ownership setting will not apply to all the documents in that folder.

If you use the external tool GoReact for video annotation you will need to complete these steps to reconnect the GoReact assignments to your new course.

  1. Go to the GoReact assignment in the new course.
  2. Click the button to the load the tool in a new window.
  3. In the Create Assignment window select “Previous Assignment”
  4. Select the name of the course where the assignment was originally created in the Choose a Course field.
  5. Select the name of the assignment in the Choose an Assignment field.
  6. Click the red Add button.
  7. Review the settings that are pulled in from the previous assignment set up and if everything looks ok, click the Done button at the bottom of the screen.
  8. Repeat steps 1 – 7 for each GoReact assignment in the course.

If you use the external tool Hypothes.is for collaborative annotating you will need to complete these steps to reconnect the readings in your course to the assignments.

If there is a Panopto Resource/Folder that accompanies your course you will need to update the student access settings for this folder. To add your new students to the Panopto folder: Follow these instructions to “Add a link to an existing Panopto video folder”. Following these steps will ensure that all Panopto videos embedded in your Canvas course will function and that students enrolled in the course will be able to view this content. To remove your past students from the Panopto folder: navigate to the sharing options for the folder. Under “people and groups,” locate the previous course title and click “x” to remove access.

If your course uses any video resources accessed through the library’s collection it is important to check the links in your course to see if they are working and check in with a librarian to ensure that the access will persist throughout the length of the course. Some resources need to be subscribed to periodically.

Update all links to Zoom rooms, dates and times in the text of your Canvas resources. If you use the Zoom integration (accessed through the left hand menu bar), be sure to set up your Zoom meetings at the start of the session.