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Speaker: OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

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Dana Thompson: So welcome. We're going to go over Blueprints and Templates in Canvas today. And there's my contact information, if you have questions later. So for the objective today, we're going to look at how we can use and understand the functionalities of Blueprint courses, and how they are different than course Templates. And then how you can control the content.

Now, this is geared towards those of you who are on the admin side. Next week, we'll be talking about it from the teacher's perspective-- if you are a teacher in a course that is a Blueprint course or a Template course, how do you plug your content in, and that kind of stuff. But for today, we're going to talk about how to set it up, which one to choose, and the benefits from having Blueprints and Templates.

So when we take a look at what a Blueprint course is, this is a course that is a Master course that you might have standardized content in. So if you've got several teachers teaching the same course, and you want to control the content so that you are meeting those standards, and course outcomes, and all of that you are working on, and you want it to be consistent among all of your teachers, you can set up a Blueprint course. And it will push all of that content out to your associated courses. And the associated courses are the ones that will have students in them.

The master course will not have students in it. It is strictly a course Master. So it's used for consistent course design and content synchronization, making sure that everybody has what they are required to have. And then it also provides the opportunity for teachers to be able to then customize what has been unlocked. And it restricts them from customizing the items that have been locked that you don't want to be altered or different than what the intent of the course was.

So the changes at the Blueprint Master can be synced out to the associated courses, even after the courses have been started and students are in them. But the locked content will overwrite that so that you can maintain that efficacy of what you want to remain unchanged in all of the courses. So it's great for those-- like I said, those courses that are being taught. It's the same course being taught by multiple teachers.

It's also great if you have a course, or you have announcements or content that you want on [verbal filler]. It doesn't have to be the same subject. It can be all of your Monday, Wednesday classes, or whatever the case may be-- that you want to push content out that everybody teaches, those common modules, or those common concepts. But then they have the freedom to customize their content.

So I'm going to show you what that means and what that looks like. But Blueprints are ideal for that consistency, and for pushing out content on a grander scale, so that everybody gets that without having to do their own course content import and that kind of thing.

So when we're looking at these Blueprint courses, the items that can be synchronized are any Canvas content types. So files that have been uploaded into the Canvas Master course can be synced to the associated courses. Any kind of Canvas assignments, Canvas quizzes, Canvas pages, Canvas discussions, all of those can be synced from the Master to the associate. And it's from top-down. So when you're working in the Master, that exact copy will be transferred down or synced to your associated courses.

It's created and maintained by the account admins or somebody that they have designated access to that Master course. But you don't want everybody having access to that Master course because then you can't maintain that-- maintain the content in a way that you know that it's not being modified when you don't want it to be modified. So you do want to restrict who has access to the main Master course. But the beauty is, is once that content has been pushed down to the associated courses, then that's where the teachers can customize the areas that they are allowed to customize.

So when we say content locking, what that means is it allows you to lock parts of the course-- whether it's the content, or an assignment, or the points-- so that that can't be modified by the teachers in the associated course. And then you can designate areas that are not locked that can be modified by the teachers in their associated courses.

But the two things that have to happen, from the admin perspective, is your Master course has to be in the same sub-account tree as the associated courses. And the Master course cannot have any students enrolled in it. It can only have the teacher, or designer, or admin enrolled in that course. So those are two things that you want to make sure happen.

So how is this different-- and I'm going to show you examples. How is this different than a Canvas Template? So if you've been into Canvas, and you have a new course shell, you know that everything is completely empty. And you have to create those Canvas pages, assignments, discussions individually, and it-- just everything is at the default. You also have to go in and customize your course navigation, if you want it to be different and hide the things that you don't want your students seeing in the course navigation, and those kinds of things.

But say you have a Template that you would like your teachers to start from so that they have a welcome and overview module. And then they have modules already set up for them so that all they have to do is plug-in their information. They don't have to think about, oh, should this be a page? Should it be an assignment? And they don't have to recreate everything from scratch.

And it maintains kind of that branding. So you have your colors. And if you wanted to have a home page that has buttons, you can have that all pre-set up. And then what happens is, again, it cannot have any enrollments in it-- the Canvas Template course. But you create all of that branding, and that navigation, and that course flow in the Master course Template. And then you indicate from the settings in the sub-account that any new courses, whether they're made from an SIS import or manually, will start with that Template inside of it.

So it provides those elements for the teachers to start with. And then it's at the teachers discretion how that is then customized, and what goes in there, and what they use, and what they hide. And that synchronization doesn't happen. It's just the Template is provided for them to get going. And it helps them get started much quicker because they don't have to create all of those elements from scratch again. And they don't have to worry about importing the Template. It's just there.

But there's no follow-up. Like, you can't change it and then push it out. Once the Template is imported into the course, when the course is created, that's the length of it. So this is great if you want to provide that structural foundation, if you want to have a uniform layout and course navigation across all of your courses. And it's great for those institutions that are looking for consistency in the course design. And, again, that kind of branding. But then beyond that, your teachers have free rein over the course. They're not restricted, and they can't be synced.

So the key features of Templates is that it supports all content types. So you can have a Blueprint course, start from a Template, and then be that Blueprint and Master that then pushes out the content. The Template, again, is applied to any new course shell during the creation, whether that's done manually at the admin level or through an SIS sync or upload. The admins, again, will create that course Template and maintain the course Template. But then once it's pushed out to the courses, that is now in the teacher's purview.

So there are some limitations. Again, if you update your Template, it will only apply to new courses that are made from that updated Template from then on out. It does not backfill the Templates that were already created before you made changes. And there's no direct association with existing courses. So it's a little bit different than a Blueprint.

So there are advantages and disadvantages to both. The advantages of the Blueprint, again, is that synchronization so that you can continue to sync content down to the associated courses, even after they've been started, and students are enrolled, and they're working. There's more control on the admins because you can then lock aspects of the course that you don't want to be modified. And it keeps that consistent course design.

The advantages from a Templates perspective, not a Blueprint, is that there's an easy transition into new terms. So you can update that Template from term to term, or it's just that consistent design from term to term. There's a consistent starting point for teachers so that they know what to expect when they go in and they're creating their new courses. And it's less initial work for the instructors because a lot of those design tasks can be done for them.

Disadvantages to both. For a Blueprint, it is a time-intensive setup, and there is potential overwriting of content. And one of the things that needs to be communicated very clearly to your instructors is that if you have an area that has been created in the Blueprint, and is locked, and it's then pushed down to the associated course, and the teacher changes that content, the next time that Blueprint is synced, it will overwrite the teacher's changes. Because it's been tagged as the Master. So we want to make sure that teachers know that-- the areas of the course they're working in, that if they change it it, there's the potential of it to be overwritten.

And then there's-- The Template disadvantages is it's limited to just new courses that are created. It doesn't go back to courses that were already created. And it does require an Admin intervention for setup. So both of these need to be set up by somebody on the Admin side so that it will provide that starting point for your teachers.

So what do you need to think about when you're deciding whether you want to create a Template or a Blueprint? What is your primary goal? Are you looking to standardize the content across the various courses for existing courses and new course creation? So if you are looking to standardize content, you're going to look towards a Blueprint.

Updateability. Do you need the ability to push content updates automatically to multiple courses? Then you would need a Blueprint. Then we look at control. Do you require the ability to lock certain content to prevent the editing by your instructors? That would be a Blueprint. And then we look at the benefits. How frequently do you create new courses that would benefit from a standardized Template? So, again, that's providing that starting point.

So we're not just looking at a blank slate. We already have the home page with buttons and the modules set up. And if that is something that will help your teachers, and you're creating new courses a lot, then a Template would be what you would use for that.

Management. We need to look at who's going to be responsible for managing and updating the course content. That is much more time-intensive on a Blueprint because it is consistently syncing and pushing out content to the courses-- the live courses.

And then the priorities. Is maintaining a consistent structure and content across all courses a priority? Structure can be accomplished with a Template. The consistent content would be accomplished with a Blueprint. And then, how much customization do you want instructors to have in their individual courses?

So before I go and demonstrate these different aspects of Templates and Blueprints, and show you how to set them up, are there any questions or things that you want to ensure I cover either today, or I can let you know it would be something that I would cover for the teachers next week?

No questions? Feel free to grab the mic, or you can put your questions in the chat. Yeah. I am looking at the chat and will try to monitor that. But Karin is in here, too. And she's monitoring the chat. So please feel free to ask your questions. But we're an intimate group, so you can grab your mics, as well.

OK. So I'm actually going to change my sharing. So I'm going to stop sharing for just a minute so that I can share my Canvas. And now I have to-- Oh, it shut down on me. Let me open that up again. OK. So here I am. I'm in my Canvas instance. And I'm actually-- because this is for admins, you should see your Admin Shield here. And when you go to your Admin Shield-- I'm going to go into my Dana's Sandbox, but you would have your instance here.

And when you go into your account structure, you will see I have here a Template, which I'm going to show you what that would look like. And then I have my Blueprint which I've named with the naming convention BP to start so that it tells me, when I'm looking at-- when you start getting pages and pages of courses, it's really nice to know that this would be a Blueprint course, and not one that you would open up for enrollments.

So I have my Blueprint for my Intro to Culinary Arts, and it's also indicated that it's a Blueprint with this icon. Whereas with the Template, it's a different icon. But seeing those will also visually help you know that it's a Template or a Blueprint course.

And then these are my associated courses. So BP_1.0 is how I started the naming convention for my Blueprint. But then as it populates into my associated courses, I've named those with 1.1, 1.2, et cetera. So these would all be Intro to Culinary Arts, associated with my Blueprint Intro to Culinary Arts. Any questions so far?

Karin De Vareness: You have a question in the chat. Angela asks whether or not admins and sub-accounts also see the Admin Shield.

Dana Thompson: If you are a sub-account admin, yes, you will see this shield over here. So if you are in a role where you are being told you need to be the admin for this sub-account, and you don't see this shield, then that's where you need to reach out to your Canvas administrator-- your overall Canvas administrator and let them know that you don't have the admin access.

So if you want to take a minute, I'll give you a minute to log into your Canvas. And go ahead and click on your Admin Shield, if you have one. And so I'm showing you my sub-account. So this Dana's Sandbox is a sub-account. So it's not so populated. But if I were to come in to the OTAN instance-- and you can see here that there's a ton of courses-- 17 pages worth of a list of courses. And so this is where it can get overwhelming, if you don't have a good naming convention that you think about ahead of time.

But as I'm looking through all of these, I can see right here that this Sandbox Master is a Blueprint course, right? And as I'm looking through here, all of these Sandbox courses probably were started from that Blueprint. I can also come up here and show only my Blueprint courses. So if I know that I need to go in and update a Blueprint course, maybe put in some content that needs to be pushed out to the associated courses, and I don't want to go through those lists, I can come up here and show only my Blueprint courses.

And so now you can see that, even though we had 17 pages of courses in OTAN, we, right now, only have three Templates-- or Blueprints, one of them being my example, Intro to Culinary. So you can then toggle that off. And Blueprint courses should be renamed from Templates.

Yeah, so when-- let me come back to my sub-account because it's easier to see these as examples. You can see here, I just put Template. If you've got sub-accounts-- so maybe you have-- whether it's based on building or department, you might have sub-accounts structured in that way. So for me, this Template would probably make more sense if I put the name of the sub-account underscore Template just so that when you're looking at all of the courses from all of the sub-accounts, if you're that main admin, you can really understand which Template goes where, if they're going to be different. They may not be different.

But the key is that the Template or the Blueprint-- so my Template here for Dana's Sandbox sub-account cannot be used in any of the other sub-accounts as a Template because they're not in the same tree. So if I wanted this Template to be utilized by many sub-accounts, I would need to put it in the main root account. Sorry. [clears throat] Does that make sense? I may have totally confused you.

But think about the tree. And if you've got sub-accounts or sub-courses down here in the bottom of the tree, that Template or that Blueprint Master needs to be able to be above it in that tree so that it can filter down. So I can't have a Template in the bottom sub-account and expect it to be able to be used in sub-accounts above it or next to it. So think about, visually, that tree. They have to be in the same structure.

OK. So here I am in my sub-account, sub-account Admin. And I'm just going to show you first what my Template looks like. Actually, what I'm going to do-- can't do that because I have a Template. What we're going to do is in our sub-account, or even the main account, every sub-account has a course-- or a aub-account navigation here over on the left-hand side.

I'm going to come all the way down to the bottom and click on Settings. When you're looking at a Canvas course and you click on Settings, that's going to be the settings for that course. But when you're looking at the admin course structure courses, then this is the settings for that sub-account course structure. So I'm going to click on Settings.

And feel free, if you have your Canvas open, to do this with me, if you would like. But now I'm looking at the settings for this sub-account. And I know I'm in the sub-account because here's the OTAN main account. And then I'm in a sub-account of sandboxes. And then I'm in my sub-sub-account of Dana's Sandbox.

So, like I was saying before, if you-- I created this Template or this Blueprint in my Dana's Sandbox. That means I can only use it for anything that's in my sandbox, or if I start creating more sub-accounts underneath it. But whatever I create in Dana's Sandbox cannot be applied to any of the courses in the sandbox sub-account or in the main course structure. But if I created a sandbox Template or Blueprint here, I could apply that to any sub-accounts underneath that.

OK. [laughing] So here I am in my sub-account called Dana's Sandbox. And if I scroll down here, these are all the settings for this sub-account. So it can be different than the other sub-accounts. But I can come down, and as I scroll down here, you can see that I have this course Template. And what I can do is indicate what I want to be-- for any new courses to be created in my sub-account, they will take on this Template.

So I can do No Template, and it would just be a blank Canvas course. Or I can inherit from another course, but I don't have any selected yet. Or the JUICE Sandbox Template, that is probably a Template that is living in the sandbox sub-account, which I am under. So I could pull from that. But the JUICE Sandbox can't pull from mine. Can't go-- it's like that backwards mapping type thing. Or I could choose the Template that I created. For right now, I'm going to choose No Template and update my settings because I want to show you the difference.

OK. So now I just have a default sub-account. I'm going to come into the courses in my sub-account. Here are all my courses again. And if I were to come over here and create a new course, because I turned that Template feature off to-- and set it to No Template, I'm going to create this course. And this is going to be Demo. We're going to do TemplateDemoNoTemplate so you can see the difference.

And I'm just going to make my reference code the same as my course name. This is in my sub-account. And I'm going to put it in the default term, OK? So I'm creating a new course. And I'm going to click on Add Course. So now you can see this course in my list of courses in my sub-account. When I open up this new course, it's completely empty. There's no modules. There's no home page. My navigation is set up so that I would have to come in to my settings for this course.

And I don't want my students seeing all of this. I want them to see as few things in that navigation as possible to reduce the noise. And so I would have to come here and manually-- for every course that I'm a teacher in, I would have to come down and update my navigation manually. So this is taking some time. What I do when I'm teaching is I only show my students, my modules, my syllabus-- if I have a syllabus.

Because I mostly teach at the K-12, I hide the people. But if you're at the adult level and you want them to see the other people in their course, you can do that. I want them to see the grades. But everything else, I want them to access through modules. So you can see I went from 30 things in my navigation down to 6. So when I save this, you can see now that my navigation, all of these are hidden from my students. And they see fewer, right?

I also have to come in here and choose an image so that there's an image associated with the course card on the student's Dashboard. I would need to come in and turn on any feature options that I want on, like if it's not turned on automatically at the root level. And then I would have to come to my Home, and create my home page, and then go in and set up my modules because I use modules. And I would have to do all of that setup before I could even think about starting my content, OK? So that is what we're going to try and avoid by implementing a Template.

So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to come back to my sub-account. And I'm going to come back down here to Settings. And I'm going to scroll all the way down. And instead of saying No Template, there's a Template here that I created. So it's a course that I did all of that setup, and created a home page, and created a module structure. So basically, saved my teachers about-- depending on how intricate they want to be, you could save them anywhere from 10 to-- 10 minutes, to half an hour, to even longer by just having that set up done for them.

So I'm going to choose my Template. So as the admin, I had to do all of that once and saved it as a course. No students will go into that Template course. But now when I come back to my Admin Courses List and I create a new course, this one's going to be my demo, TemplateDemoYesTemplate. [chuckling] So I'm going to, again, make my reference the same, put it in my sub-account, and make my default term. And I'm going to add this course.

So now, I assign the teacher to this course. And they come into their course, and look at what is already done for them. So I don't have a home page yet, although I could do that. Well, there should be a home page, and there should be modules. It may take a minute.

So I'm going to come back here to Dana's Sandbox, and I'm actually going to-- oh, the reference code is what shows up up here. So if I come in to-- let's say I come into this Intro to Culinary Arts. This is the reference code right here. So your main code that is sometimes imported from the SIS, it could be this really long name that doesn't make sense. So the reference code is what would show up here in the breadcrumb. Yeah.

OK. So taking a look at this culinary course, this, you can see, has a home page with some instructions. And it has the navigation already set up so that the navigation is hidden-- most of what the students don't need to have access to, because they're going to access it through-- yeah-- through the reference, or through the modules.

And when I click on Modules, you can see that there's a module for the teacher to give them kind of a this is how this Template works, and this is how you can modify it. Because we might have new teachers that haven't used the Template yet. Then there's this Canvas resource for students, which every course should have because it allows the students to go in and, if they have a question, can easily, like a help desk-- right there. They're clickable.

And then it has a "welcome to your class" kind of Template setup with pages, where they could plug-in the class overview, their information, any class resources, and have a question board. Again, nothing's published. So they get to choose what is published and not published. And then a suggested module progression, where they can engage, explore, expand, evaluate, extend. So looking at those Es.

And so you can see that this is a course that was set up. And the teacher can then come in and duplicate, and-- oh, I could totally do that-- duplicate this. And now we've got-- so week one, they duplicated the Template module, the example module, and then plugged in their information for week one, Introduction to Culinary Arts.

And then in week two, it's the same structure, which helps our students stay engaged because they don't have to try and figure out every week what they're supposed to do, because it's consistent. And now they're going to learn about knife skills, and food preparation, and then keep adding. But the nice thing is that that initial course setup is done for them, right?

So I'm going to-- just for kicks and giggles, I'm going to come back here, and open up my YesTemplate, and see if it's been populated now. So remember, this is the one that I made after I put in the settings that all new courses should start with a Template.

And there it is. So I just didn't give it enough time that first time. So it does take a minute because it has to copy all of that content in there. But this is the one that I just made in this session today. And I can come in here, and I can either remove the banner-- So as a teacher, all I have to do is come in here and either upload my own banner that I can make in Canva, or Google Drawing, or whatever, or I-- and then I can come down here and add my welcome message. And then I can add my course buttons.

But the design was done for me. So I don't have to mess with that. I don't have to spend my time trying to figure out how to do that because it's done. And the other thing that is also done for me is that I can come in here to Modules, and there's my teacher module. And there's my overview and resources for students. And there's a "welcome to your class" that I can just plug-in my information and publish. And then here's my module Template, where I can go in, and pick, and choose, and then just start copying and pasting my information in.

But the design is already done. So when I come here to the Overview and To Do List, it's already here. And now that I'm thinking about it, Penny, we should have just done this with the dark course. But anyways, so I can come in and plug in the Overview for this week. I can plug in my To Do List for this week. And if I don't want this, with a Template I can delete it all and do my own thing, right? Because the Template is just to get your teachers started, and then it's all on them. So they can keep it, or they can start over.

But having any time I come into my Dana's Sandbox sub-account, and I create a new course by either manually creating a new course or by doing an SIS upload, all of those new courses are going to start with this Template-- all of them in this sub-account.

So when I come into this Template, this is where I actually went in and did those start-up tasks-- customizing the navigation bar, creating a home page, coming over to this Choose Home Page option and setting the page as a home page, because default is Modules. And a lot of teachers don't know how to change that. And so they just let Modules be their home page, even if they don't want it to be their home page.

But if they want a front page, that's done for them with this Template. The module structure has already been set up, and the syllabus has already been set so that they can add their syllabus and the assignments. Anything with a due date or a grade will show up on the syllabus.

OK. So let me look at a couple of these questions. OK. So, Angela, if you are in a different instance, you can't share Templates or Blueprints across instances. So the only way you can use the Templates that are in OTAN is if you are a sub-account in OTAN. Or I will upload this Template to the Canvas Commons, and you can download the Template into your instance, and then set it up from there. Karin, go ahead.

Karin De Vareness: So sorry. I uploaded the URLs from the Canvas Commons thinking that they would be able to use it. One of them is the Template that you're showing here that you created for OTAN, and the second is the second Template we created. So how can I--

Dana Thompson: Yeah. So if those are-- let me pull that open. Did I pass it? OK, so here's the link that was in-- that's in the chat. Yeah. So what this is the link to the actual Template in the-- that's good question. So I am in Canvas Commons, but I'm logged in through OTAN. So I think that's why, because I'm accessing it through the AE California instructor. So the link that you want-- So here's the Adult Education 2023 Custom Template, right?

So if this is the one that you want, you can go into commons and search for it. Or I can come over here and copy that resource link. And that-- I'm going to-- let's post it in the chat and see if it's different. Yes, it's different. So it's--

Karin De Vareness: Ah. That's smart.

Dana Thompson: Yeah. If you want to share a resource from the Commons, you actually have to grab the link from the Commons. You can't grab it from your own instance. So now, the link that I just put in the chat, that will get you to this Template, which is not the one that I'm using. This is the one that OTAN created for all of the adult education, and before I started doing these. So the one that I have--

Karin De Vareness: We have two. We have yours, as well, on our Canvas. So that was Template 1-2. Yeah.

Dana Thompson: OK.

Karin De Vareness: We have it. We like your Template, too.

Dana Thompson: Excellent. So that link in the-- is this first one. And then you can see-- you can either go through all of these--

Karin De Vareness: Actually, you can go to the filter and hit California Adult Education Canvas Commons in the filter.

Dana Thompson: Yeah.

Karin De Vareness: And go scroll all the way down.

Dana Thompson: And all of you can do that, as well. So OTAN or California Adult?

Karin De Vareness: California Adult Ed Canvas Commons.

Dana Thompson: Yeah. So--

Karin De Vareness: Sorry to interrupt you, take you on a little rabbit hole.

Dana Thompson: No, you're good. Please interrupt. So when you are in Commons-- the rest of you-- and you're not in OTAN's, but you're in your instance, you can go over here on the global navigation and click on Commons. And then you can go over to the filter and choose the California Adult Education Canvas Commons. And that will show you everything that has been shared with this collaborative that is not available to anybody who uses Canvas.

So you have the Custom Template. You've got some agency training, the video library, teacher training. So a lot of things in here that are available just because you're a part of the consortium here with the adult ed-- California Adult Ed. OK? And you can even-- it works very much like any kind of search. I can come up here and type in Template. And then you get just those that you can use that have been designed to be a Template. It doesn't mean that you have to use it as a Template, but you can start there.

So this is the one that I shared in the chat. But if you wanted this one instead, again, you can come in here. And if you are in your instance you can download this Template straight to a course. So you would import and download, and then it would tell you all of the courses that you have available. So I can come over here and say this-- I'm going to search for a course in my instance called TemplateDemoNoTemplate and see if it finds it. No courses found.

Let's look. Oh, because I'm not a teacher in any of these. That's why. So if you don't see your course here, then you could download it, and then upload it into the course that you want. And then I'm going to go ahead and copy this resource and paste it in the chat. So now you have both of those direct links so you don't have to search for them.

But that's another way that you can really streamline, as an admin, your workflow. So instead of coming in here and recreating your own Template-- unless you want to. Unless you want to change the branding, and put your colors, or those kinds of things. But if you're happy with the OTAN ones and the California Adult Ed one, download them into a course, that doesn't have students.

So you could come over here to your Admin Shield and create a new course. So I'm going to come in here to the TemplateDemoNoTemplate. And if I wanted to import from the Commons, I would choose that. And then I'm going to come over to my filter so I know I'm getting the right one. And I'm going to go to my California Adult Education Canvas Commons, and I'm going to download this one right here.

So you can see it's been downloaded 36 times. And three people have starred it, meaning they're going to come back to it. But I'm going to go ahead and click on that, and I'm going to import. And again, it's not letting me. So I'm going to-- I'm showing you all of the ways-- download. There's like 10 billion ways to do something with Canvas.

So it downloaded what's called a Course Cartridge, OK? So now I can come back to that course because it didn't--

Karin De Vareness: Of course, it doesn't work when you need it to, Dana. Luckily, she knows 10 ways.

Dana Thompson: Exactly. So I tried to import from Commons, but it didn't let me. So I downloaded the Course Cartridge. And now what I'm going to do is import from existing content. And I'm going to upload that Canvas Course Export Package. And that should be in my Downloads file. So I'm going to come over here to Downloads, and there it is right there-- because it's the last thing I downloaded. Otherwise, I don't know if I would know that. And I'm going to--

[laughter]

I'm going to import all content. And what I like to do-- this is just a personal preference. I'm going to adjust events and due dates, and remove all of those. Because I have found it's easier to remove all of the dates and then put in the dates that you want instead of shifting the dates, because it never lines up how we think it should line up. And then it's a lot of clicking. So I just like to start from scratch. And then I'm going to import this. And now it's imported.

So remember, this was that blank Canvas. But now when I come home, see? It always takes a minute. Let's try this again.

Karin De Vareness: You are not going to get a break today, I don't think.

Dana Thompson: I know. Sheesh. OK, so we're going to come down here to Settings. So this is the process I would go through. I found that Template that I liked in Commons. I imported it into my course here. And now we're going to pretend it all imported correctly. We can even check and see if I gave it enough time-- not yet.

But once you can see that everything is in here correctly, then you would come down to Settings and-- no, because I'm in the course. So when you're in a course that you want to be a Template, it's up here at the top. I'm going to enable this course to be a course Template. Now when I go to my sub-account settings, this will be one of my options as a Template that I can choose.

But this step is very important, and I should have done it first. But you have to enable it as a course Template in order to be able to choose it as a course Template. So now that I've enabled it--

Karin De Vareness: So--

Dana Thompson: Go ahead.

Karin De Vareness: So maybe go ahead and press update, and there it is.

Dana Thompson: And here it is. See, I just didn't take long enough. So now we have the Template.

Karin De Vareness: And sometimes I do it three or four times, and you get three or four Templates added on to it over time. So it happens sometimes.

Dana Thompson: Yes, it does.

Karin De Vareness: But maybe we should clarify. Is everyone with us? Or that was a lot of info, that little rabbit hole. Yeah. But that's the way it works. And I'm so happy that you're human, too, using Canvas.

Dana Thompson: Well, and that's the thing I found, is if it's not working, there's another way to do it. I have a preference that I'll try first. And then if it doesn't work, I'll just try doing it a different way. So once you figure out what those different ways are, then it's easy to just continue going. But sometimes--

Karin De Vareness: And the help desk is always an option. OTAN has that 24/7 tech help. You just call any time of day, and 99% of the time you get someone really great.

Dana Thompson: Yeah, so this in here. But you can see now that this is a course-- remember, this is the one that was not a Template. But now I want it to be a Template. So I'm actually going to come down-- before I set it as a Template, I'm going to come down to Settings. And I'm going to change the name to AdultEdTemplate2023. OK? And I want to change the course code, which is that reference code that-- when you did it manually.

Again, I've enabled it as a course Template. So I want to keep that checked. And then I'm going to come down here and update that because it's different than the other one, right? But when I come into my sub-account, you can see here that now I have that AdultEd Template. And it has the icon, so I know it's a Template.

So I now have two Templates in this sub-account. Unfortunately, you can only indicate one of them to be your Template when you're creating new courses. So this is where you might have your fall Template, or your fall 2023 Template. And then in the next fall, 2024, you might want to make some changes for that new term. So you create a new Template instead of updating the old one because you want to keep that old one for historical purposes and documentation. But then any new course in 2024 will get the new Template.

But what I would need to do in my sub-account is come down to my sub-account settings, and then come down here to where I'm going to choose which Template I'm going to use. And now I have the ability to choose that AdultEdTemplate2023. So now, any new course I create from here on out will have that new course Template instead of the original one that I had created earlier.

Karin De Vareness: Don't forget to update, because I know we get used to all of our Google Drives, 365's, and it updates and saves automatically. And, of course, in Canvas, it doesn't.

Dana Thompson: I've done that before, where I've done all of these changes, and then I've X'd out of the window to go do something else. And I come back, and none of my changes had been saved. Because you have to click on Save in Canvas. [chuckling] OK. So coming back to my sub-account course list, you can see that I now have these different Templates to get my teachers started and to give them a Template to then just be able to avoid having to do all of those manual tasks in the beginning that are kind of annoying if you want consistency as a teacher, right?

But once those courses are-- those new courses are created, and they've pulled in the Template, then there's no changing that you can do to those courses that have been created, manually or SIS. But if you want the ability to update content and push it out, because I have a Blueprint course that is attached to all of my teachers in the different-- in my district. Say you've got five teachers teaching culinary arts at the different high schools or whatever, or the different adult schools, and you want the content to be consistent, and you want to provide it to them. Then that's when you would use a Blueprint.

So, again, I mentioned that you can use a Template to start your Blueprint course so that you don't have to do all of those initial tasks again. But you can't have a Blueprint start your Template course, if that makes sense. Go ahead, Penny.

Penny Pearson: Oh, Dana, I have a question about-- I love the idea of Blueprints because you do provide some control for, say, your administration and the content. But as that Blueprint course is created for Mrs. Smith, teacher, does that teacher have the option to either rearrange the modules or hide the modules in case they want to go through the content in a different order than what was originally presented in the Blueprint?

Dana Thompson: Yes. Yeah, so there's different levels of control. So I'm going to come in here into my Blueprint course. So this is a course that is set up, will never have enrollments-- student enrollments. And I would even go further to put the banner in, leave this placeholder text so that they know this is where you can come in and put in your message. But you do what you want to stay consistent across all of the courses.

And then what you do in the Blueprint master course, before you push it out the first time-- before you push it out the first time-- is you have to enable it as a Blueprint course. OK? So remember when I checked the other one as a course Template? This one you're going to check as a Blueprint course. So my progression suggestion is, first, just come in and create the course to the point where you want to be able to push it out to teachers.

So there are some times where, for accreditation purposes, you want the whole semester done, right? So you're going to have somebody come in and create that course from start to finish for the semester with all of the content that you want every teacher to have included in their course, and the progression, and whatever the case may be-- the images, the links, the files. And then, once you've got that course done, then you would come here and enable it as a Blueprint course. And then you would start pushing it out to your associated courses.

The other thing-- and then it's with the teachers. The other thing that I've seen people do a lot is they have this culinary course, and they want their teachers to teach the same content. And each week, they push out the new module, right? So the week one module, they have access to it in week zero so that they can customize it as they are allowed to.

And then while they're teaching week one, you're building week two and pushing-- and then you let them know, OK, on Friday afternoons, we're pushing out the new content so that when they come back in on Monday, they have that next week's content. So you push it out a little bit by little bit. So you choose how that's going to work for you and your team.