[AUDIO LOGO] SPEAKER: OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. 

DANA THOMPSON: Welcome to sharing content in Canvas. And we're going to talk about today how you can not have to redo the wheel every year or even every semester or even every unit because you can create things in one Canvas and share them out not only to other courses that you're teaching but also with colleagues. 

So like I said, you can have your Canvas open and try some of the things that I show you but you don't have to. That's not a requirement. So, again, if you have any questions, please do throw those in the chat. I'll be monitoring the chat as best as I can. And happy to answer questions or redo something if I went too fast or you need to see it again. Those kinds of things. 

So we are going to talk about how you can import non-Canvas content. We can copy courses that you currently have going that maybe you're going to teach again next term, or maybe you're teaching three different sections. And you can create the content in one of your courses and copy it over to the other two, which really saves you time. 

We're going to talk about how you might export your content so that you can share it with colleagues or even with teachers in a different instance. And then one of my favorite tools in Canvas besides the Accessibility Checker is the validating links tool. And that really helps you ensure that before you open up your course to your students, all the links in the course are working. And if not, you have a chance to fix them. So that's what we're going to go over today. 

So first, when-- we all know-- I'm going to jump over here to my Canvas course. This is a brand new Canvas course. And it has nothing in it. So a lot of teachers think that, oh, I'm teaching this course again. I'm going to have to redo everything. And they spend a lot of time doing that. 

But really what we want to do is we want to import content that we have already created to have a starting place so that then you can go in and just edit what you need to edit and modify due dates and those kinds of things. 

And there are a couple of ways of importing content into your course. So I'm going to jump over here again to my blank course. And you can see that nothing's really been set up. So one of the things I always do, first and foremost, is I come down here to my settings. 

And under my settings, my first step before I forget anything is I set up my navigation so that my students only see those items in the course navigation bar that I want them to see. They're not confused by all of these other things. 

So my first step always when setting up a new course is to come over and set that navigation, even if I'm copying in another course. Sometimes that setting will come in with the other course when you copy it in, so you don't have to do that again. 

But you can see here that if I were to leave it as the default, my students potentially are going to see everything that I see over there on the side. And they don't need to because I only want them to see their grades, their modules, and the announcements and maybe the people in the course. 

So my first step is I come here. And this is the one part that can be a little bit cumbersome. Maybe am doing badges on my modules, which we talked about a couple of meetings ago. But I'm going to drag all of these things that I don't want my students getting cluttered in their course navigation. 

I'm going to drag all this down. I want them to see modules because that's how they're going to access all their content. But because they're going to access their quizzes through modules, they don't need to see this quizzes link, or the rubrics, or the outcomes because those are actually attached to assignments. 

I do want them to see my syllabus because that will have my office hours and my contact information and all of that. I don't want them to see pages because again, they're going to access that through modules because I'm going to set everything up in modules, which is your table of contents basically. 

Maybe I do want them to see who the other people are in the class so that they can contact if they want to work outside of class together. But if you don't want them to have that ability to see who else is in the class, then you would drag that down to this area as well. 

And so really, I'm only going to leave these six things up here for them to see. So I have to-- it's not like Google. I do have to save my settings. But you'll see that now I have the hide icon next to most of my items. And so my students will only see those six things when they are working in the Canvas. And they won't get confused by all the clutter that's happening over there. 

Now, the second thing I'm going to do because this is a course that I've either taught before or I've already been creating the content in my sandbox course. And remember, your sandbox course is a course that you can play around in, play in the sandbox. But there will never be any students in that sandbox course, so you're not going to inadvertently send them notifications or make them think that they have an assignment due because there's no students in it. 

But you can create content in your sandbox and then pull it over to your courses that will have students in it. So that's a really good workflow because sometimes you don't get access to the actual course until maybe a week or two before the course starts. But you want to start working on it ahead of time. 

So there are a couple of things that I can do. The first thing-- again, I'm still in settings. So I would come down here if I weren't here already and make sure I'm in settings. And I'm going to import into this course some content that I've already created. 

So I'm going to click on Import Course Content. And then we have a ton of choices. But you really only need to know about a couple of them. When I drop down this list, you can see all of the different things that I have the ability to import. But really what I want to do is copy a course that I'm already teaching or my sandbox course that's in Canvas. So it has to be in the same Canvas that you're logged into. 

Me, I have multiple Canvas courses because I do a lot of teaching but you probably only have one. Unless you're working in multiple districts, then you might have a different Canvas instance, they call it, that you log into to teach your class. 

If that's the case, I'm going to show you a different way in a minute. This way is only if you are teaching another Canvas course that's in this same instance of Canvas. So I'm going to copy a course that I've already started or already taught or have already been working in. 

I am a teacher in these courses, so I can come in here under course name if I know the name of the course. So I'm teaching an intro to culinary. You can see that it's going to show me a list of all of the Intro to Culinary courses that I have access to. So you can see I have several in here but you might only have a couple, or if-- you can see I have Culinary Arts and Medical Front Office. 

These are courses that I have access to as a teacher in this Canvas that I can then pull any of that information over to this new course. So I'm going to come in here. This is the one that I just have finished teaching. It's the one that has the most current information that I've made my changes to. So I'm going to go ahead and pull in this course content into this brand new course. 

Now this content area, this is important. If you are wanting to pull the entire course over-- it doesn't mean you have to use it, it just means that it's going to pull everything over from that course-- then you would choose all content. But maybe you only want a module, or an assignment, or a discussion from another course. Then you would do the select specific content. 

So I'm going to show you all content first. So if I select all content, my next option is that I can import these existing quizzes as new quizzes. So this is because many people have created quizzes in the classic version of quizzes. But when they pull it over to the new course, they want to have those quizzes migrated automatically as new quizzes. 

And if you do, then you would check this box. My suggestion is to not have it come over as it is so that you have that original content because then you can always choose to migrate the quizzes that you want to migrate from classic to new quizzes and maintain that classic quiz just in case something goes wrong. So I don't recommend check boxing that but you can. If you have not been using classic quizzes at all, it doesn't matter. You can ignore that setting. 

This is another one that I recommend. So this is a course, say, that I have taught already. And it has all of the due dates from last semester. If I want to have that copy over into this course, I can set the beginning date of this course. So say the beginning date. This is going to be my summer program, so it's going to be July 1. 

Actually, this beginning date is of the current course, so that would be June 1. So let's change that to June 1. And I'm going to have it change to July 1. Now, the problem is my semester course from June-- I am just not doing very well today. January, sorry. It started January. And it's going to end at the end of June. 

My summer course is condensed, so it's only the month of July. So I don't want to shift my dates because they're not going to shift nicely. It's going to have things due in August when the course will be closed by August. 

So what I'm actually going to do-- and I do this regardless for my workflow because I would rather put in my correct due dates from the start instead of trying to figure out which ones to change. I'm just going to actually remove all of the current due dates and my current course when it migrates over. 

So that does not mean it's going to change the due dates in the current course that my students are working through right now. It just means that when it takes all that content and puts it in this new blank Canvas course, it's not going to pull in any of the due dates. I can then go in and set my due dates according to my syllabus without having to worry about having ones that don't-- that I forget to change. 

And then I would click on Import. So I'm going to import this content. And it takes a minute. Right now it's queued. I can go and work on other things and come back. And it will let me know when it's done. But you can see that it's running. And it's taking all of that content, discussions, quizzes, files, links out, images, icons, all of those kinds of things. 

And it's pulling it over into here and making a copy of it. And it does take a minute because it's doing quite a bit. But that way, I now have a starting point. And I don't have to start from scratch. Now, one of the things that you need to realize is if your district has starting you with a template, so when you go into a brand new course, you already have a template, in there, no content, just design. 

If the course that you're copying in has any of the same file names, it will overwrite the template file names. So just remember that there are some-- so it doesn't mean that you can copy over and you're done. But we do need to go and validate it and make sure that everything is correct. 

So it's still running. Now that it's completed, when I click on my home button, you will see that no longer does it have an empty core shell. It now has my culinary arts. Now, this says spring of 2024. So one of the things that I'm going to need to do to update this course is to make sure that I update my banner so that it says Summer of 2024. 

And because I did that as an image, what I need to do-- and I'll show you how I did this as an image-- I'm going to come into my Google Drive. And I actually have-- let me see if I can find it. I have a slideshow called banner. And this is where I have the different banners that I'm making. 

So I'm going to come in. And I'm going to change Spring 2024 to say Summer 2024. And in order to put this in the Canvas course, what I need to do is save this one slide. So I'm going to download this one slide as an image. 

And it's going to download it into my Downloads folder. But see how it has the one on it because I already have a banner in there. I'm going to change that name. So I don't know if you can see this because it's in a different window. But I'm changing the name of that image that I just downloaded. So it just says banner.png. And it's going to replace the other one maybe. 

Let's do it this way. OK. So now I have an image that has the same exact name as the image that's in the content that I brought over. And the nice thing about that is I can now come over to my-- well, you can do that a couple of times or a couple of ways. There's always 10 different ways to do everything in Canvas. 

I'm going to come over here into my page, my home page. And I'm going to edit it so that I can get rid of this image. And I can upload that new version that I saved with Summer 2024 and make that a decorative image so it's accessible. 

And so now I've changed my Summer 2024. I might need to come in here. And if I have any information in here that is specific to summer-- doesn't look like it. This is pretty general, so I can just go ahead and save this page. And the home page is now ready for my summer 2024 course. 

Then I can come over to syllabus. And I can change-- maybe my office hours have changed, so I'll change that. Maybe I'll change some of the grading policy because it's accelerated course. Maybe I need to add some required materials. 

But basically, everything is here that I need to start with. And I can just go in and modify it. And that's the benefit of bringing over a course that you have already worked on, has information in it that you want to use again without starting from scratch. So I'm going to pause. Michael, I see you have your hand up. Go ahead and ask your question. 

MICHAEL DELANEY: Hey, maybe I'm getting ahead of you. But copy to versus import because I know I use both methods. I'm a Canvas administrator. For teachers to do this, I first need to create a shelf for them. 

DANA THOMPSON: If they don't have the ability to create their own shell, then-- so there's a couple of things. So typically, the Canvas administrator will create the courses that students will go in. Because you have a naming convention, you want to make sure that it's in the correct sub account, all of that. 

So once you've created that course, what this allows teachers to do is maybe if they have already started-- if they have already started working on their content, that they can work on their content and their sandbox course that doesn't have students in it, then once you've created their course that will have students in it, they can then just transfer that content over using this method. There's also the copy to which I'm going to go over. Any other questions? 

OK, I'm going to give you just about 60 seconds to go in and just come into your course settings and come over to the Import Course Content and just get familiar with going there and taking a look at it. 

If you want to try and import an entire course, go for it. Again, this is where you're going to import an entire course. What I'm going to show you next is if you just want to take bits and pieces. So I'll just give you 60 seconds to take a look at that. 

MICHAEL DELANEY: If I could continue with that question because what we've been doing is I've been-- they have the power to copy their own course. And then after the fact, I go in and put it into a sub account or adjust some dates. 

DANA THOMPSON: Yes, you can do it that way, too, because that just means coming into their settings and doing it from there. You can even do it with an SIS upload. Any questions before I move on? Go ahead, Jose. 

JOSE ANTONIO RODRIGUEZ: I never used settings before. But now that's so cool. 

DANA THOMPSON: Yeah, there's a lot can do in settings. And there's a lot should not do in settings. Let me go over that just real quick just in case other people are in the same boat. When you're working with settings, you don't-- unless it's a sandbox, which doesn't matter. 

But if it's a course that students are going into, you should probably not change the name because that's something that your Canvas admin may have set. And it follows a naming convention so that they're easy to look up and all of that. Same with course code. 

So really under Settings on this first tab, the only thing that you might want to do is change the default due date time. So if you want your students to turn in with-- if you put in the date but you don't put in the time, it makes it 11:59 PM. 

But say you want to make sure that your students are turning it in by 7:00 PM, you can come in and change the default due time to a different time so that you just have to put in the date. And then the default time is automatically what that new time is. 

This language is user configurable. So if you set it for a different language, that's only for you. Your students will be whatever the admin side has set for them. And then the other thing that you can take a look at under More Options is you can allow announcements to show up on the home page, which is really nice. 

I say no more than three, otherwise it pushes the content of the home page down. I usually do one or two. But this way, if you put an announcement in the course, it will show up on the home page so that when students log in, they'll see it. And they're not required to click on Announcements to see it. It'll be there too. 

But if I say show three announcements on the course home page and update my course details, now when I come home, up here, you can see my recent announcements. And so that way, they don't miss it. So that's another good thing in settings. But really all of that other stuff, the course level settings, you want your Canvas admin to set. But this navigation is super important. Now you can see-- 

JOSE ANTONIO RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, I like it a lot. 

DANA THOMPSON: Yeah, but with the import of that other course, it had a different navigation setup. So I would want to come back in here and redo it. So if you are importing content in full course, not just this and that, but you're importing a full course like I just did, maybe wait to see what the navigation is because I'm going to have to come in here and do this again now because the course that I imported had different settings. But it's easy enough. But that way, they only see what they need to see. And they're not getting confused by all of the other stuff. 

JOSE ANTONIO RODRIGUEZ: Well, that's cool. 

DANA THOMPSON: Yeah. So I can also-- like I said, I can also copy a Canvas course that I'm only going to select specific content. So maybe I know that I did a fun activity in my Intro to Medical Front Office that I want my culinary art students to see as well but I don't want to bring in the whole course because they're different subjects. 

I can come in to my medical front office and select specific content. And again, I would adjust those events and due dates and remove all those dates. And it's going to-- and this is where it gets confusing. A lot of people are like, well, now how do I select the content? 

You actually have to click on Import. And then you're able to select what content. So maybe I can come over here and only import. I'm going to expand all of the discussions I had. Maybe I really liked this group discussion. It went really well in my medical front office class, so I'm just going to import that group discussion. 

So you can pick and choose things. If you pick and choose a module, so maybe I wanted this learning module, that will bring in everything from that module. And you don't have to go and select everything manually. It will just bring in that whole module. Or you could just bring in files or those kinds of things. 

But this used to be the only way you could bring in individual items or modules. There's a much easier way to do that now. But I just wanted to show you the difference between importing an entire course or importing by selections. 

Now, I'm not going to select anything. And so this is just going to stay here. And it's going to keep telling me that it's waiting for selection. But it won't import it until I actually make the selection and click on Start Import. Michael, did you have a question? 

MICHAEL DELANEY: Yeah. Once you brought something over, if you make changes in that new course, is the old course still the same as it was? 

DANA THOMPSON: Yeah, it is not impacted by-- it does not copy back to the old course. It only updates the new course. Yeah. Carla. 

CARLA LOPEZ: It's more of a comment. So I imported the content from one course to another. But it was one college to a different college. And so unfortunately, I didn't-- do you know where it says import files, so where all the graphics are? 

DANA THOMPSON: Yeah. 

CARLA LOPEZ: So there was no way to select a group of them. And I had to go through and basically delete 100 of these graphics files because they didn't apply to that college. So next time around, I'm not going to make that mistake. 

DANA THOMPSON: Yeah. And I've done that too. And the colleges are in the same Canvas instance, or you did it a different way? You did it through the screen? 

CARLA LOPEZ: Yeah. And actually, the distance people sent this really helpful video. But because they didn't know what each of those things that I was selecting was about, I think that's where I made my mistake. 

DANA THOMPSON: Right. This is a little trick that I've learned. If you know that you have a bunch of things that were imported that you want to get rid of but you can't individually or you can't do, like, a select all and delete, what I've done before is I've created a folder. And I call it delete. And then see that shows up over here. 

Then I can come in here. If I want this, I can drag and drop whatever I want deleted. And I can come in here and just-- I don't have very much in this course, so it's hard to see. But say I want-- these are all the wrong banners. 

So I can either come in here and drag and drop what I don't want, or I can even Shift-click. So I'm holding my Shift key down right now. And so I want these four. I can click, drag, and drop these into my Delete folder. 

So then when I go through and I do all of that, then I can come to this delete folder. Actually, I'm going to come into the main folder so that I can come over here to the Delete folder. And I can delete that folder and everything in it. It's still a lot of clicking. But it's less than probably what you had to go through, if that makes sense. 

Any other questions before I show you an easier way to copy individual items in Modules. OK. One more thing. I'm going to go back here to Settings. And you'll notice that when I come back to Import Course Content, that this still is sitting there. And like I said, it's just going to sit there forever. But I'm not going to worry about it. 

But if you do multiple imports, which you can, you'll see every import in a list here. And if there are any issues, the issues will show up here too. And you can click and see what that issue might be. OK, Michael. 

MICHAEL DELANEY: Just it only happened once, but I ran into a size. Is there a size limit on the imports? 

DANA THOMPSON: That depends on your Canvas, how the Canvas is set up as far as import size and file size. 

MICHAEL DELANEY: So then the admin can bump it up? 

DANA THOMPSON: Yeah. I know that there are some times where maybe it's a video production class. And because they're bringing in a lot of videos, instead of linking out to YouTube, they're actually uploading videos into the course to put in the course content, sometimes they need to have larger file sizes for the course to house those videos, so the Canvas admin can either bump it up by subaccount level, or by instructor level, or even by course level. 

So that would be something that you can say, reach out to me if you need more file size. And if it's justifiable, then yes. But yeah, that's set at either the subaccount or the account level. 

Also, the only other thing I want to show you in this dropdown area is this Canvas Course Export Package. So like I mentioned, I have several different Canvas accounts. And so if I'm working in a Canvas account in one account and I want to take that content and put it in my OTAN account, I can't do that by copy of Canvas course, because this only sees the courses that I'm involved in my OTAN account. 

So what I would do at that point is in the course-- and I'll show you if I come back down here to Settings, you have the ability in one of your accounts to export your course content. So instead of importing content, I now have my content. 

Say, I've spent time working on this and it's perfect and I want to teach that in this other school that I'm working at that has a different login for Canvas and I don't want to have to recreate it from scratch, I can export this entire course. 

And so if I create an export, that's going to zip everything into a zip file. And again, it takes a minute. But once it's into a zip file, it will send you an email saying your course export package is ready. But you will then come back to this place. 

So again, I could go navigate away. But it's exporting for me. And then you'll be able to download that export package to your computer so that you can log into your other Canvas login instance and upload it into that course. 

Or if you're sharing-- you're working with a colleague in a different district or in a different school and they have a different login but you want to share the content, this is one way that you can do that. This works very similar to the Canvas Commons, which we've talked about in other sessions. But I'm going to show you again today. And it's still exporting, so I'm rambling. 

But once this exports-- and it might just be because I'm on a conference Wi-Fi. There we go. You can see here it's now a new export as a link. I also probably have an email sitting there saying that I have it. So I'm going to actually click on this link. And it downloaded it to my Downloads folder. 

And now just say I'm going into my other Canvas course. So say I come down here to my other Canvas course and my other login and I come into Import Course Content, now I would choose this Canvas Course Export Package. That's the one that I had saved as a zip file to my computer. And so now I'm going to choose that file. 

And in my downloads, there's that file right there. It's an IMSCC. That's your course export package. So that's the course from one instance. Download it as an export package to your computer. You go into the course in the other instance. And you import it as a course import package. 

That's just another way of getting content from one place to another. A good example of that is I have summer school teachers that teach in their district during the year. And then they teach that same subject in summer school, which we do through a nonprofit that has their own Canvas instance. 

And instead of having to redo that course for the summer, they just download it from their district Canvas course. Then they log into my summer school course and upload it into their courses, and then modify it for their summer program. So that way, they're not having to redo it. Any questions about importing a course package? 

So I know many of you have already tried the Canvas Commons. So I'm actually going to come back to my settings. And you'll notice that there's this Share to Commons. So this is a way that you can do that same process of that course export package and then uploading it into another Canvas instance or whatever the case may be. 

But I know a lot of schools, they will tell their teachers, the end of the school year is coming. We're going to conclude all of your courses. You're going to start with a fresh screen. If you want any of your content, make sure that you export it, or save it, or back it up, or whatever they say before June 30. 

And so doing that course export package is one way. And you just have to remember where you downloaded it and saved it and all of that so that when you get your new courses in the next year, you can then import your content, even if you don't have access to your old courses anymore because that's how your district is organizing it. They're just clearing your course list. 

So you can do it that way, or you could take your course and you can share it to Commons. And so this will open up the Canvas Commons. If you haven't logged in to Canvas Commons through your Canvas course, it's going to ask you to authenticate. I've already authenticated. 

But now what it's doing is it's asking me specifics about this course that I'm going to put in the Canvas Commons. So did I already put this in the Canvas Commons? And if so, is this an update? So maybe I put it up there last semester. But I've made some changes. And so I want to update the one that's in the Canvas Commons now, so I would make mark it as an update. This is brand new, so I'm not going to mark that. 

Then who can use this resource? So if you're just simply backing up your course so that you have it to use later, regardless of what the district does with your previous courses, then you're going to put only me, or you can share it to all of OTAN, which means that if you are a culinary arts teacher at one adult school and you have a colleague who teaches the same course at another adult school but you don't have the same Canvas logins, the Canvas instance logins, you have different Canvas instances but you are all a part of OTAN, then you can share it with all of OTAN. But nobody else who isn't part of OTAN will have access to your content, which I think is important for some people. 

There's also selected consortiums. So again, here's that California Adult Education Canvas Commons. So maybe you want to share it to all of OTAN and to the California Adult Education Consortium. It looks like in OTAN, those are your only options. 

Sometimes you might see that you could share it to the world. And it's like, teachers pay teachers. You're putting your content out there for anybody else to grab and modify. And you've lost the control of it. So think through that one. You might not want everybody in the world to have or anybody in the Canvas world to have access to it. 

For my purposes because it's really not a course, it's just a demo, I'm going to make it only me so that I have access to it later, even if for some reason I lost it in my Canvas instance. It's not on my desktop. It's not in my past courses. I can't find it. But it's up here in the consortium. 

So then you can come down here. And typically, if it's a template, there's no content, it's just a template, you can check that. You can say it's copyrighted or those Creative Commons designations. Again, if it's just a backup, you don't need to worry about that. It has to have a title. And the it has to have a description. So I'm going to say this is demo of sharing content in the Canvas Commons. But you can put your own description. 

Tags is nice if you want to search for something. So I might put here sharing content. I put a comment in. And it automatically made it a tag, share, put a comma, then it's a tag. So that way, those are your keywords. If somebody searched for that, your course, if you're sharing it beyond yourself, would show up in their list. 

And then you need to put an image. So again, I love Google Slides for this kind of thing. If I come home and I create a new Google slide. And I'm just going to put Sharing Content In Canvas. And I can get as fancy as I want with this Google slide or not. But the slide setup, just your regular slide setup, works very well. 

So I'm going to put this as my course card because I can use it again and again and again. So I don't want to say it's just sharing with Canvas. And again, I'm going to download this to my computer as an image so that I can come back to the Canvas Commons and upload that picture of my slides from my Downloads folder. There it is right there, course card. And there it is. Very simple. 

But with Canvas slides, you can put in images. You can put in backgrounds. You can put in whatever. You can change your font. So it's a little bit prettier than just what I have here. But now I have an image because it is required. So you have to put something. 

And then this is nice when you're sharing with others so that they have an idea of what this is for. So my sharing content, this is for undergraduate and graduate, people who are teaching. But if you're doing an adult ed but it's going to be 10th grade level, you could come here and say that this is 9 and 1/2 to say 12th grade level. And then that's just for when people are coming in and looking for it. 

And then I'm going to click on Share. And that's going to take a minute. But it's going to upload that entire course into the Canvas Commons so that I can either import it into my courses in the future, or I can copy this resource link. 

And if I have it so that it's shareable with others, I can just give them the link. And it will take them right here to the Canvas Commons, or I can add it to my favorites so that I can get to it later. Any questions before I have you guys tried that out? 

MICHAEL DELANEY: I have a quick question. I mean, sometimes when I take things in from Commons, links have gone bad or pretty frequently. So-- 

DANA THOMPSON: That's the Link Validator. That's what I'm going to show you next. You're always one step ahead of me. But that's true because remember, I'm uploading it from my Canvas, so I might be linking to my syllabus, or to my website, or to whatever. 

And then when I import it into another Canvas course, if those links aren't automatically-- so if I link from my home page to my modules, when I copy that over to another Canvas course, sometimes, because technology isn't perfect, that link that's on my home page that is supposed to link to modules in that same course might try to still link back to the modules in the other course. And that's a broken link because students can only access the items that are in the course that they're enrolled in. 

So there's a Link Validator that once you've gotten your content in, you've either imported it or you've copied it over, the last thing you do before you open it up to students is you run the Link Validator. So I'm going to show you that because that will go through your course and try and find those broken links so that you can fix them before students find them. Yeah. Any other questions? I am going to show you that. 

MELINDA: Dana, I'm sorry for interrupting. This is Melinda. 

DANA THOMPSON: No, you're good. 

MELINDA: Do you show people how to check links using the HTML code by any chance? 

DANA THOMPSON: I haven't done that as a-- 

MELINDA: The answer is no, so never mind. If anybody wants to know how to check HTML code, just contact Melinda. 

DANA THOMPSON: Yeah. If it's something where this isn't working, this isn't working, then I usually will go in and check HTML code because sometimes that just makes people more confused. But yes, you can do it that way, too. 

And really, for me, doing it that way, that just tells me whether the link is going to work or it's not. And then go back to the Design View to change the link if it's not going to work because it's easier on the Design View. But yes, you can do it that way. 

OK. So again, so now if I refresh this, let's see what happens. So this is my course. You can see I have all of that information is in there. And if I came in here and looked. I'm trying to find if I have all of my-- so now if I just come back to my Search. And I'm going to search here by shared. Remember, that was some of my keywords. 

Was it share or shared? Let's do share. Maybe not. Of course, share. If not, then we'll search by-- seeing there are a lot in here, so I'm going to want to come and filter. And I want to filter so that it's-- I don't want to include all the public resources. I just want to include, say, this California Adult Education. 

Oh, it's probably not done uploading. It did take a minute. There it is, Sharing Content in Canvas. So this is what I shared. So remember, I only shared it with OTAN and the California Adult Education Consortium. 

When I was in the search, I was looking for all public resources. And so it did not show up for that. But it is here now. And so I can always-- if I'm ready to import this into a blank Canvas course, I can come in here. And I can, again, import it. And I can search for my class. 

So here are the two that I have available to import. And I would just choose one and click on Import into the Course or I could download that course package. So if I downloaded the course package, it would download as that zip file. And then I could go into my course and upload it as that course import, course package that we did earlier. 

So that's using the Commons to basically back up your own work so that you can use it later. So it's not just looking for others-- work that other people have done but actually backing up your own courses. Michael. 

MICHAEL DELANEY: So real quickly, like, I don't throw away or conclude anyone's classes. And so they're all sitting in deep in their courses. Is that going to become a problem for us storage-wise or something, or? 

DANA THOMPSON: No, storage-wise, it's not a problem because when you-- when it becomes a problem is when you are trying to sort through. So if you've only been around for a couple of years, it's no big deal. But like I'm in an instance where we've had courses for 10 years. And if those courses don't get concluded, when I'm going to try and find a course, I have to just-- because I'm a part of so many, I'm just having to search through a whole bunch. 

And I know in the K-12 where it's connected to a student information system, many times that student information system at the end of the semester will automatically conclude a course and remove all of the teachers and remove all of the students. So even though it's-- I technically should be able to come in here to Courses and go to All Courses. And I should be able to see all of my past courses under here. 

But in some of those instances where the student information system just removes everybody, the course still is in the Canvas instance. There's still that backup for admin to get to. But the teacher no longer has access to it, unless somebody goes in and manually re-enrolls them. 

And so a lot of our schools that do that automatically through that integration with their student information system, they just automatically tell their teachers, back your stuff up to the Canvas Commons because you're not going to have access to your course once we conclude the semester. 

And they just make that part of their workflow practice so that nobody actually loses anything. Because the worst is when somebody comes in after having some time off in the summer and they go to start working on their classes and they can't find it, and then they just start. It's like this panic because now I have to start all over. 

And typically, we can find their stuff. But if there's nobody in the office to help them, then they've got several days of anxiety. And so they just-- workflow is at the end of the semester when you're done, back your stuff up to the Commons. Only you can see it. That way, you have it no matter what come the fall. 

OK. I'm going to come back here to my dashboard and come back into my Intro to Culinary Arts. So we've talked about importing entire course, exporting an entire course, backing up to the Canvas Commons so that you have that entire course. And then we talked about importing item by item. 

Within the last, I'd say, two years, maybe three, Canvas has made it very easy to now copy things within the same instance from course to course or even from teacher to teacher. And it's been a game changer. 

So this is another reason why I really like to build in modules because if I came in here and I have this great week one Intro to Culinary Arts and Kitchen Safety module that I've worked on it with a colleague who's teaching the same course, we're in the same Canvas instance, we both log in to the same Canvas, I can take this entire module. And I can copy that entire module to one of my other courses. 

So if I click here on Copy To. And I am teaching two sections of Intro to Culinary. So I'm going to type in Intro. I'm in 1.2. But I'm also teaching 1.1. So I can take this entire module that I built in one course, copy it to the other course. 

Now, remember, just like with the Import Course Content, they are now separate. So if I make changes in one, it's not going to impact the other one. So if it is something that you want to make sure is the same in both courses, make sure that all of your changes are done, then copy it to the second section. 

Otherwise, if you have to make a change, you have to make it in both places. So you can copy modules, or maybe it's just this-- I created this group discussion that didn't originally create. And so I want that in my other section as well. 

So I can copy to my second section of Intro to Culinary Arts so that I create the group discussion in my first course, copy it. And now it's in both courses. So whether it's an entire module or it's just an individual item, you can do that copy to. 

And if you don't use modules, I'm going to come in here to Pages, and then View All Pages. You can do that in the individual index links as well. If I came down here and I have this week two knife skills that I want in both courses, I can copy this page from one course to the other, or I can go into Assignments and copy an assignment over. So from these pages, quizzes, those kinds of things, you can copy individually or module by module. 

Now, say I created this and I want to send it to my colleague who's also teaching this and we're in the same Canvas, I can send this to my colleague. So if I click on Send To and I type in Karen, oops, because she's in my same instance, I can now send this page to Karen, or I can send a whole module, or I can send a quiz, or maybe I created a great discussion and I just want to send that one item to my colleague. 

And as long as they're in the same Canvas instance, you can do that. If you're in different Canvas instances, then do that through Commons. So you would share that through Commons. But you can't send to somebody who's in a different instance. 

Now, I'm going to actually send this to myself so that you can see what happens if you are the person who receives shared content. So I'm going to come down here to my dashboard. You can see that I shared that to myself. 

And typically, you'll see a red dot on your account Shared Content. Now, because I shared it to myself, it may not be notifying myself that I sent something to myself. But if you send something to somebody or somebody sends something to you, you should see a red dot here. 

But regardless, I'm going to come into Shared Content. And you can see here is that page. And I now have the choice, as the person who received this, to either preview it, import it into one of my courses, and I can choose which course, or just remove it because I'm not going to use it at all. 

So if I come in here and preview, now I can see what it is that Dana shared with me. And it's just a basic page with additional resources and tips for success. So I can come in and say, yep, I think I do want to use that. So I'm going to go ahead. And I'm going to import that into my Intro to Culinary Arts section 2 or whatever and import it right into your course. 

And if you don't want it, you're like, nope, I don't need to use that, I can go ahead and remove that from my notifications. It does not remove it from the person who sent it to me. It just removes it from my shared content list here so that you can keep organized. 

So again, I'm going to come back into my course, come over here to modules. And again, whether it's an individual item or it's an entire module, you can send those to other people in your Canvas instance. 

Any questions? So copy to yourself. Send to your colleagues. That's how those two choices work. But that is a much easier way than trying to go into export content or just import certain items. 

And then also remember that when you're copying to copy, not send, but when you're copying to another course, it has the same name of something that's already in there, there's a very good chance that it will overwrite that item. So you just want to be careful that you know that that is-- that's a possibility. 

MICHAEL DELANEY: Can you export an individual, like a quiz or a page or? 

DANA THOMPSON: That's a great question. And I'm hoping that this is in the works to be changed. But as of now, if I came over here to export course content, the only thing that I have the ability to export individually are quizzes. And these are classic quizzes. So your new quizzes-- actually, Canvas looks at your new quizzes very much like it looks at as an assignment. 

So I could export any classic quiz I have in here. And so what a lot of people might be doing is exporting the classic quiz so that they can import it into another course and then migrate it to a new quiz. But as far as exporting individual items, no, you would have to export the entire course, and then import selected items, which at that point it's just easier to do the copy to or the send to. 

And if I come back out here to Commons now that I'm thinking about it. If I come here. And I'm going to filter just for things in OTAN. Now let's search for California Adult Education, share. 

Anyways, if I come into one of these and I come to import, say, I want to import it into my intro, yeah, you can only-- I think at this point you're importing the whole thing. Then you would go to the course. And you might be able to pick and choose. 

But that's where you run into then having to delete a whole bunch of stuff. So yeah, being careful with that. I'm going to do-- let's just try this one. Yeah, so it looks like you import the whole thing. 

And I don't even know where that course is, so that was another sandbox. But yeah, that's the hard part. So in that case, sometimes what I'll do, I always have a workaround. I've found sometimes it's easier to have a workaround. 

I might start a new course where I will only copy over the things that I want to import, export that course that only has the select items, and then import that into a new Canvas instance. So as far as-- 

MICHAEL DELANEY: Sorry. 

DANA THOMPSON: Go ahead. 

MICHAEL DELANEY: Sorry, I always interrupt. So start a new course, that's the way they could create a new shell for themselves. I don't have to create new shells for everybody. Is that-- 

DANA THOMPSON: Correct. If you have given them-- and this is an account setting. If you have given them the ability to start their own course, then they could come in here and start a course. You can see I have a whole bunch of different subaccounts. But I can come in here and change that to my specific subaccount that OTAN created for me. 

But again, if they did that incorrectly, you can then go in and manually change it for them, or do an SIS upload with a spreadsheet. And then they give their course name. And so coming up with a naming convention, like start it with Sandbox Dana Thompson or Sandbox 2024 Dana Thompson, that way, it's easy to search for those so that you can do mass changes or mass lookups. 

But if you have given them the ability to have this button on their dashboard, yes, they can create their own course. And if you're not using a student information system, then it doesn't matter. If you're using a student information system, then I would tell my faculty that the new course is only for sandboxes. Students will never go in them, because the SIS will do that automatically with the courses that the SIS sets up. 

I want to come back here to my presentation to make sure I covered everything. Oh, I didn't. So this is the best part. So this is the course that I started out with nothing. And I did it-- no, it's not. Let me come back to my dashboard. 

So course that I just set up, sharing content in Canvas when we first started, it was blank. There was nothing in it. And then I imported the content from my culinary arts. And I shared something individually, that discussion or something like that. 

So now I'm almost ready to open it up for students to see. Then here to Settings. So in this whole workflow, settings is your magic link. I'm going to come over here to this validate links and content. 

And so what this is, is a tool that Canvas will then go through all of the content that's been imported and test the destination, every link that it sees, to see if there's something that's broken. And so what it's going to return with is if I've created a link to something that doesn't exist, it's going to tell me that's broken. I need to fix it. 

Or if I've created a link to something that I haven't published yet, so if the students were to click on that link, they would get a broken link because it's not published. It will tell me that as well. So it does take a minute. But then it will let you know if you have-- everything looks great, you'll get confetti. But otherwise, it'll give you a list of things that you need to fix. 

And so it's really helpful because then you don't have to click through every page and click through every link to make sure that things work. It will also give you any images that are missing. So if you put an image in the original course and then when it copied over to the new course, that image didn't make it, the Link Validator will find that. 

So yes, it does take a little bit. But it's a really helpful tool. And I will actually use this Link Validator a couple of times throughout the semester because we all know that technology doesn't always work. And so something that was there that I might have linked to on YouTube, whoever on YouTube that posted it, removed it. So now that link is broken. 

So if I go through once a month or whatever and run this Link Validator just for kicks and giggles, sometimes it'll find things. And so what it's finding here is on the page called Badger. These are external links outside of Canvas that were unreachable. 

So usually what I do at this point, if it's external links, sometimes that means that when Canvas Link Validator clicked on that link or tried to find the destination, it's behind a login wall. And so it says it's unreachable. 

So if I click on this Canvas Badger course, you can see here that it doesn't exist. So that's a link that I need to fix on the Badger page. So I can come here to the Badger page just by clicking on this link. And it looks like all of these resources don't exist. And I can say that's probably true because Badger was bought by Canvas and is now Canvas Credentials. And they may have changed all of those pages. 

If didn't click through by myself to figure this out, then the students would have gotten to this page, clicked on this link, and gotten to all these bad links, which sometimes then that gives them the excuse to throw up their hands and say then, this doesn't work. I don't have to do this assignment or whatever it is. 

So now I can come in here and fix these links by clicking on the Edit and either make them go to the right place or maybe I just need to unpublish this page because it's not valid anymore at all. Nothing on here is correct. But that Link Validator saved me the headache of going through and finding that. 

So I can come back to this validate links. And this is all here. And if I go and fix these. And I always come back and restart and make sure that I caught everything. But that Link Validator, great tool to use, not just when sharing content but just to make sure that everything that you've linked out to on the external web is still there, that whoever the owner is didn't remove it or put it behind a login wall. 

So that's the Link Validator. You can see here in the screenshot that this is saying that the course card image isn't there. So I would need to make sure that it is. And if it's not, re-upload the course card. 

This is saying that a link to the module called Other Module doesn't work or the link inside the-- so these are external links, these images. Those images don't work. But it gives you a direct link to where in the course it's broken. And it's telling you what is broken so that you can fix it. So that's the Link Validator. I'm at the end. 

OK. Yes, I can do that. Let's see. Again, we talked about send to or copy to. If you're looking at an assignment, you're actually on the Assignment page. You're not in the Assignments Index page or in Modules. But you're actually looking at the assignment. 

If you click the three dots, you have the option to send to or copy to directly from that assignment or that page or that quiz also. Those three dots always mean that you have more options. So you can share with other teachers. And again, if you want to share with someone in a different Canvas instance, you'll need to either use the Commons or the course export package. And that's it. Any questions? 

Pretty painless today. 

JOSE ANTONIO RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, I'd just like to say that-- I mean, there was some really cool stuff in here that I learned. And it's going to make things easier for me. Usually, the way I copy stuff is I just open up the old Canvas and copy stuff over to the new Canvas. 

DANA THOMPSON: Right. No, you don't have to do that. 

JOSE ANTONIO RODRIGUEZ: And I don't do the whole thing. I did that one time. And then I found myself in a quagmire of changing dates and doing all kinds of crazy stuff. So I just do it piecemeal myself. 

DANA THOMPSON: Yeah. And the nice thing with the Copy To is you can still do that piecemeal. But it saves you the trouble of having to copy or highlight, copy, go over here, click where you want it paste it. Instead of five clicks, it's one click. And in the big scheme of things, that can be a long time that you're saving. 

JOSE ANTONIO RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, no, that's the easy way. 

DANA THOMPSON: Yeah. Awesome. Anybody else? 

JOSE ANTONIO RODRIGUEZ: Now I can't wait to get into-- 

DANA THOMPSON: Well, and this is good because we're towards the end of the semester, so you can start thinking about what you've done this semester that you can now just copy over to the new semester's course and not have to redo it. Yeah. 

JOSE ANTONIO RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, thank you so much. 

DANA THOMPSON: Yeah, you're welcome.