Using Canvas Commons to Update Content in Multiple Courses at One Time

Using Canvas Commons to Update Content in Multiple Courses at One Time

If you teach several sections of the same course, updating content in each one can take a lot of time, especially when you have many edits to make. Normally, you would have to edit and save the content in the first course, and then repeat those steps for every other section you teach.

Instead, you can use Canvas Commons to share content to a central repository. If you need to make changes later, just update the original shared content in Commons. Commons will detect the update and ask if you want to apply the changes to all your other course sections. This means you can “update once, and distribute to many.”

Sharing Content to Commons

The first step is to share a piece of content to Commons. This is outlined in Sharing and Importing Course Content in Canvas Commons: Sharing Content to Commons.

Example: An instructor creates a content page in Course A, and she shares that page to Commons.

Importing the Content to Your Other Sections

Next, once your content has been shared to Commons, import that content from Commons to your other sections. This is outlined in Sharing and Importing Course Content in Canvas Commons: Importing Content from Commons to Your Course.

Example: The instructor uses Commons to import the content page to three additional sections of her Fall course in Canvas: Course B, Course, C, and Course D.

Updating the Content

If the content needs updating in multiple courses, make the changes in the original course…not the other sections. Then, re-share the content to Commons. You will be asked if this is an update to a previously shared resource.

A screenshot from the Canvas LMS Commons interface displaying the Sharing and License settings for an update. The screen shows a toggle switch labeled Is this an update to a previously shared resource? set to 'on' with a green checkmark, and a prompt below to Select which resource you are updating: followed by the name of the resource, Writing Assignment, selected via a radio button.

You can also add version notes to let others know what was changed in this version compared to previously shared versions of the same resource.

A screenshot from the Canvas LMS Commons update process displaying the Version notes text field, which is a required field indicated by an asterisk, and includes placeholder text that instructs the user to "Please inform users on what you updated."

Example: The instructor discovers that an entire paragraph on the content page needs to be replaced with new information. Instead of making the change in all four courses (Course A, Course B, Course C, and Course D), she makes the change only in Course A, and then re-shares the content page to Commons.

Updating the Other Courses

Once the content has been re-shared, Commons will detect that a change has been made. You can use Commons to update the other courses all at one time.

Example: The instructor sees a new notification in the Commons interface that there’s an update to review:

  1. In Commons, the instructor clicks on the Updates tab.
  2. She clicks on the View Update Notes button to view the details of the content page she re-shared earlier.
  3. She selects Course B, Course C, and Course D to apply this update to, and then she clicks the Update selected button. (She can also click the Dismiss selected button if she doesn’t want to update a selected course.)