How To Duplicate or Copy Your Course in Instructure Canvas
The easiest way to duplicate your course in Instructure Canvas — and all or some of it's contents — is through your existing course. If you have already received an empty new course shell from your school, then follow the directions at the bottom of this tutorial.
Part 1: Duplicating an Existing Course
Go to the course you wish to duplicate or copy over into a new course and click on the Course settings.
Select "Copy Course" from the right content panel.
Enter the new title and course code for your new course, and add the start and end dates, as shown below. If your school uses custom formats for course codes and titles, be sure to follow their guidelines (otherwise it becomes very difficult to manage for the school's technical support and administrators).
Under the Content area, this is where you can copy everything from your previous course, or selectively copy from your previous course. If you want to keep most of your prior course contents, then it makes sense to select all content. You can always make small adjustments later. If, however, you only want to copy a small amount of content from your prior course, then it makes a lot more sense to select the radio button for "specific content."
If you also want to quickly change the events and due dates (assuming your current/prior course has a lot of content item due dates on it), then it makes sense to also select the "Adjust events and due dates" checkbox before proceeding to the "Create Course" button.
You can click on the calendar items to make picking dates easier.
After you have clicked the "Create Course" button, you are on a screen with a dropdown that allows you to select other packages to import in your new course. This can be helpful if you came from another learning management system, like Moodle or Blackboard. However, in this tutorial, all we're doing is copying an existing Canvas course into a new Canvas course, so select the "Select Content" button.
You will now see a pop-up window with arrows and checkboxes. If you see only checkboxes, then those are single items. If you see arrows, then this means it is a folder, containing further individual items to select, or another nested folder with content inside to select. You can click on the arrows to expand them, and select only items you need. See screenshot example below.
Once you have finished selecting content items to include in your new course, click on the "Select Content" button to finish the process of importing Canvas course contents into your new course. You should now see a completed status similar to this screenshot below:
If your import had an issue, you can click on the "issue" link to the right of the "completed" status, and make sure that you read what may not have gone well. You can then manually fix the link or whatever it may have brought to your attention.
Part 2: Copying your prior course when your school already created a blank, empty course shell for you
If your institution already created a blank course shell, then all you need to do is go into your course, and select "Course Settings" from your left navigation.
Then select "Import Content into this Course."
Now from the drop-down menu at the top of the main screen, select "Copy a Canvas Course." If you are copying from an export package or other LMS (such as Angel or Blackboard), then select those options.
Now you will see a dropdown list of courses that you have taught in the past, from which you can choose. If you want to see also "completed courses," be sure to check that. The drop-down list will now also reflect your completed courses. At this point, the rest of the procedure is almost the same as the procedure at the beginning of this article.
Under the Content area, this is where you can copy everything from your previous course, or selectively copy from your previous course. If you want to keep most of your prior course contents, then it makes sense to select all content. You can always make small adjustments later. If you however only want to copy a small amount of content from your prior course, then it makes a lot more sense to select the radio button for "specific content."
If you also want to quickly change the events and due dates (assuming your current/prior course has a lot of content item due dates on it), then it makes sense to also select the "Adjust events and due dates" checkbox before proceeding to the "Create Course" button. You can click on the calendar items to make picking dates easier.
After you have clicked the "Import" button, you will see under "Current Jobs" the job listed for your new course import. Click on the "Select Content" button to proceed to the selective course contents import pop-up window.
You will now see a pop-up window with arrows and checkboxes. If you see only checkboxes, then those are single items. If you see arrows, then this means it is a folder, containing further individual items to select, or another nested folder with content inside to select. You can click on the arrows to expand them, and select only items you need. See screenshot example below.
Once you have finished selecting content items to include in your new course, click on the "Select Content" button to finish the process of importing Canvas course contents into your new course. You should now see a completed status similar to this screenshot below.
If your import had an issue, you can click on the "issue" link to the right of the "completed" status, and make sure that you read what may not have gone well. You can then manually fix the link or whatever it may have brought to your attention.