Copying Courses

There are several ways to copy course content from another course into a Canvas Course.

Copying a course within Canvas - Direct Copy

You can copy from one course to another on Canvas if you are the instructor for both classes. You may want to do this to copy from an old semester to a new semester.

To do this kind of copy, start at the new course on Canvas and choose Settings on the left navigation menu, then click the "Import Content into this Course" button, and choose Copy a Canvas Course. You can then choose the course and the content. See detailed Canvas instructions here: How do I import content from another Canvas course?

Copying a course within Canvas - Export / Import

Another way to copy content from one course to another on Canvas is to do an export then an import. You might choose to do this if you want to archive a course on your computer for a while, before you're ready to upload into a future semester. You also may want to do this if you are transferring content to a course taught by a different instructor.

To do this kind of copy:

First, go to the old course, find Settings, then click the "Export Course Content" button then choose "Course" and click the blue Export button. After a while, you will see a "Click here to download" link. Click that to save the Export Package to your computer. This file will be named something like math120-export.imscc.

For more detailed instructions, see the Canvas documentation here: How do I export a Canvas course?

Next, go to the new course on Canvas and choose Settings on the left navigation menu, then click the "Import Content into this Course" button, and choose Canvas Course Export Package. You can then choose the course and the content.

For more detailed instructions, see the Canvas documentation here: How do I import a Canvas course export package?

OBSOLETE:

Copying a course from Blackboard to Canvas (OBSOLETE Archived instructions - Biola no longer uses Blackboard)

We generally encourage instructors to rebuild courses from the ground up in Canvas rather that copying from Blackboard, since the structure and organization of Blackboard is different. It's a good excuse to redesign your course. But if you do want to try a copy, here's how to do it.

First, log in to Blackboard and find the course to export. Go to Control Panel / Packages and Utilities / Export, then click Export, then choose what to export and click Submit. After a few moments, you will be able to download a ZIP file. For more detailed instructions, see how to Export from Blackboard.

You will now have a ZIP file on your computer. You can keep this around for later use or just for your own archives.

Once you're ready to upload that course to Canvas, go to the new course on Canvas and choose Settings on the left navigation menu, then click the "Import Content into this Course" button, and choose Blackboard 6/7/8/9 export .zip file. For more details, see the Canvas instructions at How do I import content from Blackboard. You may also find these step-by-step instructions helpful:

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