Considerations for copying an assignment to other courses

To copy an assignment to multiple courses you must be either the course owner or an instructor in both the source and destination courses.

• Request copies of the existing course from your course administrator.
• If the other courses already exist, go to each course and use the Copy assignments from one of my courses option to select all assignments. You can copy assignments to any available Mastering course created using the same book or a supplemental book like a lab guide, including from different editions.

You can copy assignments to any available Mastering course created using the same book or a supplemental book like a lab guide, including from different editions. Before you copy, consider the best practices described below.

Watch a video: Copy an assignment to multiple courses

Open the Copy Assignment to Other Courses window

To copy an assignment to other courses, select Copy Assignment to Other Courses from either:

• The Assignments page ( List View or Calendar View), on the menu next to the assignment title
• The assignment's Overview page from the assignment quick links (left)

  

  Interactive Lab assignments —
  You can copy an Interactive Lab assignment into another course. However, you cannot copy an Interactive Lab into a course that already has the same lab assigned.

• This process is ideal for an assignment that you want to add to other courses for the first time. For updating an existing assignment, see Later edits to this assignment below.
• Before you begin, be sure all the receiving courses have been created and you are allowed to create assignments in each course. (You might be the owner of or an instructor in each course.)

• Make sure the assignment contains everything you want to send to the other courses. Changes you make later will not be propagated automatically. See below: Later edits to this assignment.
• Consider whether to include dates (Due Date/Time, Available From, and Available Until) with the assignment. If receiving instructors want to preview the assignment before students are able to see it and begin work, you might save steps by leaving dates out of the assignment. See below: Assignment dates.

• When the assignment is copied to other courses, the category remains the same, unless, for a standard Mastering assignment, the original category name does not exist in a receiving course. In the latter case, the copied assignment belongs to the first non-specialized category alphabetically in each receiving course.
• The copied assignment uses the settings of the category in the receiving course. If category settings differ from course to course (even if the category name is the same in all courses), the grading, presentation, and security settings of the copied assignment will vary accordingly.
• This variation might be exactly what you want, which is why instructors have discretion over category and assignment settings. However, if you and any other instructors involved with the receiving courses want to ensure consistency for the settings, you can check the category settings in the receiving courses before posting the copy.

The list of potential receiving courses you can select includes active courses (course end date has not passed) that are:

• Available Mastering courses created using the same book or a supplemental book like a lab guide, including from different editions

• Courses you created using the account you are currently signed in with.
• Courses to which that same account has been added as an instructor.

Assignment copying not allowed under certain conditions

• You cannot copy assignments to Mastering courses based on textbooks or sources unrelated to the book for your current course.

• If students have started work on the assignment you want to copy —
  Courses in which an assignment with the same title exists are listed, but if students have started work on the assignment, copying is disallowed to prevent students from working in both assignments.
  To continue with the copying

  Either clear the selection (not copy to that course) or change the title of the assignment for the affected courses. The instructor of the receiving course can then decide whether to edit the existing assignment that students have already worked on.

• Only one version of an Interactive Lab assignment per course —
  You cannot add a second copy of an assigned Interactive Lab into a course.

The title the assignment will have in the receiving course becomes editable as soon as you select the course in the list.

• If you're copying an assignment into another instructor's course, consider adding your initials or some other marker to the title to make it easily recognizable for instructors receiving the assignment. Doing so also avoids duplicate titles when a receiving course already has an assignment with the same title. Instructors of the receiving courses can remove this marker later.
• If students have started working on another assignment with the same title (see the Note in the previous section), a distinguishing marker in the title allows you to post this assignment.
• You can enter different titles for the assignment for different receiving courses. The assignment content and organization will remain the same for all courses.
• Titles can include upper- and lowercase letters, numbers, spaces, and other keyboard characters. If scores will be transferred to a learning management system gradebook, do not include extended ASCII characters, such as en-dashes, em-dashes, or accents.

You can see the dates (if any) for the assignment you're copying at the top of the Copy Assignment to Other Courses window.

Examples of assignment dates when copying to another course

The dates shown below will be used unless you edit them for receiving courses.

This assignment is *PAST DUE* so that date needs to be edited for receiving courses.

This assignment has no dates. You can enter a Due Date/Time for each receiving course, or instructors for the receiving courses can add dates.

The dates the assignment will have in a receiving course become editable as soon as you select the course in the list.

• If you supply dates, you can set a different Due Date/Time for each course as needed to accommodate different class meeting days and times. As soon as you enter a Due Date/Time, recommended Available From and Available Until dates are added automatically:

  From = One week before the Due Date/Time

  Until = The Course End Date

• If the receiving instructors want to set these dates themselves, you can leave the dates blank, or delete dates here before you click Finish.

If you don't want dates to copy, or if you want different dates in different courses, you might find it quicker to start with no dates for the assignment. Close the Copy Assignment to Other Courses window, remove dates from the assignment and save it, and then open this window again.

Once copied, assignments are independent of each other. Edits you make to the original assignment do not appear in other courses. Edits made in receiving courses do not appear in other courses.

To edit ALL copies of the assignment, you have two choices.

• Go to each course and edit each assignment individually.
  (This is the best option if students have already started the assignment in the receiving course.)
• Edit the original assignment, copy it again, and delete the earlier copy from each course.
  (If you choose this option, consider adding a marker to the title of the edited assignment before you post it, to make it easy to identify in the receiving courses. That way you know which version of the assignment to delete in those courses. You might include "New" or the current date in the new title.)