Copy Course Components

How to copy a previous course offering to new course

This document is to show you how to copy a previous course offering to a new blank course.

The Copy Components Utility

This tool lets you copy Quizzes, Content, Grade Book items (but not individual grades), Assignment folders and other components from the previous course offering of this course. Copying components saves you from having to recreate your course’s resources from scratch.

Overwriting and duplicating content

The only component that might be overwritten during the copy process are Course Files. A course file is overwritten if one of the files being copied has the same name as an existing file in the same folder. No other components are overwritten.

If you are copying components from the same source multiple times, be careful not to copy the same items more than once or you will create duplicates. For example, if you have three rubrics in your current course offering and you copy two rubrics from last year’s offering, you will now have a total of five rubrics in the current offering. This is true even if the components are identical.

User data and importing course components

User data is not copied. For example, if you copy the Discussions component, only the forums and topics are copied, not the posts inside the topics. Similarly, if you copy Assignment folders, student submissions will not be copied. If you copy Quizzes, student attempts are not copied, same for the Grade Book – user data will not be copied, just the structure.

Links and associations between components

If you are copying linked or associated components, you must copy all of the related components at the same time. For example, if a piece of content has release conditions based on the results of a quiz, you must copy all three components—content, quizzes, and release conditions—at the same time.

Similarly, if you have a quiz that is associated with a grade item, be sure to copy both the quiz and the grade item at the same time. As long as the associated components are copied together, links between them are retained.

To copy release conditions, you must select the Release Conditions component.

Special considerations when copying course components

Before beginning, please note that the school year is coded into the Course Offering Code of the course. It is easy to tell last year’s course from this year’s course when you know where to look.

In these instructions, we will use Isadore Snook’s Calculus 3208 course to illustrate each of the required steps.

1. Go to the desired Brightspace course in the usual fashion
2. Click Course Admin on the course navbar



3. Click Import / Export / Copy Components under the Site Resources section.



4. Select Copy Components from Another Org Unit, which is the default, and please leave the “Include protected resources” option checked. Click Search for offering.



5. In the Search For box, enter the course number or year you wish to copy from and click Search. Select the correct course from the list of search results and click Add Selected.



6. You will be returned to the Import / Export / Copy Components main page with the selected course displayed under the Course to Copy. Click Copy All Components near the bottom to initiate the copy process.



7. The Copy Course Components History page appears, showing the date and time this copy course component process was initiated and the status of that process.

If you want to get a detailed view of the process, you can click on the progress bar to the right.

Once the process has completed, you will see a green checkmark where the progress bar was located.

If, for any reason, you only wish to copy certain components of a previous course or if you receive an error with the Copy Components process, please contact our Help Desk at 1-877-CDLI-123 or http://www.cdli.ca/helpdesk