Copy a Course
How to Copy Your Schoology Course
Point Park Online staff will copy 8-week online (ON) courses; please copy ONLY your non-ON courses.
This tutorial will walk you through the process of copying a course from one semester shell to another. Schoology doesn't offer a direct course-to-course copy, so you need to use Personal Resources as a place to store your course.
N.B. If your gradebook contains a lot of external grades--items which are NOT submitted through Schoology--you will need to take extra steps to copy those columns to a new course. Documentation is forthcoming.
Before you begin...
There are a few things that don't survive the course copy process:
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Graded discussions: Discussions revert to ungraded; however, you can correct for this during the copy process.
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Unpublished state: Any unpublished items in the original course become published in the destination course.
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Folder colors: Folders revert to the default blue color.
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Due dates: Due dates from the original course are wiped out in the destination course.
If this presents a problem for you, you may choose to copy a course folder-by-folder. This will retain published state and folder colors, but NOT due dates. Point Park Online thinks this is slightly more cumbersome, but it is an option.1
The process Point Park Online recommends for 99.7% of users follows.
Step 1: Save the course to your Personal Resources.
- Go to the course that has the materials you want, and make sure you are in Materials.
- Click Options at the top of the page and choose Save Course to Resources. Accept the default settings.
- Click Submit.
Step 2: Copy grade settings.
- While still in the course that has the materials you want, go to Grade Setup.
- Click the Copy Settings button at the top-right.
- Unless you have a compelling reason for why you should not copy all of your grade settings (categories, grading scales, and rubrics) and are prepared to defend your choice before a committee of exceptionally judgmental instructional designers, leave all three items checked.
- Tick the box next to the new/upcoming course (the one you're copying to).
- Click the Copy button.
Step 3: Import the course in the new shell.
- Go to the course that needs your materials, and make sure you are in Materials.
- Click Add Materials and choose Import from Resources.
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This is important! Read the next sentence carefully or you will be crying in about five minutes! Click on the name (the text) next to your course folder to open it; you want to be able see all of the other folders and items inside your course. If you cannot see the different folders and other items of your course listed, then do not proceed; you must first click on the name of your course folder so you can see its contents.
- Tick the box at the top of the list to select everything.
- Click Import.
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Optional but recommended if you have graded items, especially discussions: Click the Advanced Options link and modify settings (enable grading, points possible, due date, category, and grading scale) as appropriate. For discussions, grading is disabled by default; it's easier to enable grading here rather than after they are already in the course. You can edit all of these options in the bulk editor after everything is imported EXCEPT discussions. So, if you use graded discussions, it is recommended that you enable grading for them here.
- Click Import.
Fun Facts
- If you don't change anything in the new/upcoming course, you don't have to go through the Save to Resources process again. The course content still exists in your Personal Resources. The next time you teach the course, just go through the import process again.
- You might find it helpful to edit the name of the course folder in your Personal Resources. For example, you might want to indicate the semester and year the course is from.
- If you want to use something from one course in another course of yours, you can still use the import feature. Just go to the place you want the item to appear > Add Materials > Import from Resources, and then navigate to and select JUST the item(s) you want to import.
- If you have a rubric that you want to use in multiple courses, you can save it to your Personal Resources and then import it into your other classes. Just go to the course with the rubric > Grade Setup and click Rubrics on the right side. Click the gear icon next to the rubric you want to save and choose Save to Resources. To import the rubric to another course, go to its Materials section > Import from Resources and browse your personal resources for it.
- You can organize your Personal Resources as you see fit. For example, you can create a folder to store your rubrics, or one to hold your question banks, etc.
- If you teach multiple sections of the same course in the same term, Schoology makes it really easy to link the sections. That means that you only need to manage one set of materials for all sections, and you'll just switch from section to section as needed for grading, messaging, etc. You can also create section-specific settings for the same material. For example, you can make the same quiz available to your M/W section on Wednesday, but not until Thursday for your T/Th section. For now, you'll have to request this.