In this discovery session, we'll discuss our experiences using the Blueprint Courses feature in Canvas. We’ll address its benefits and drawbacks, focusing on the best practices we’ve discovered for various use cases and identifying the "gotchas" we’ve encountered as well as our workarounds for them.
The Canvas learning management system is increasingly popular in higher education and K-12 contexts. In the summer of 2017, Canvas introduced a new feature called Blueprint Courses. This feature allows a master course (the blueprint) to be set up as a source from which other courses (the associated courses) inherit content, settings, etc. Certain items can be locked in the blueprint so that they cannot be edited in the associated courses while other items, left unlocked in the blueprint, can be edited in the associated courses. In general, changes made in the blueprint can be synced to all associated courses, updating all locked items and unedited unlocked items in these associated courses, while not overwriting edited unlocked items in these courses. This provides a powerful way to maintain courses, make real-time updates or fixes, and promote appropriate inter-section fidelity when multiple sections are offered, even when when these sections are taught by different instructors.
As we have used the Blueprint Courses feature, we have experienced significant benefits, but also encountered some problems. Some of these we foresaw, and were able to proactively address. Others came as a surprise when the Blueprint Courses feature didn’t behave as we expected or in ways that were not adequately addressed in available documentation, which led to problems for which we needed to find solutions. In these cases, once we knew what to expect, we were able to find workarounds to avoid future problems.
In this discovery session, we’ll discuss our experiences using the Blueprint Courses feature in Canvas, focusing on developing best practices for various use cases and identifying "gotchas" and workarounds for them. Attendees are encouraged to ask questions and share their own experiences and plans while participating in the discussion. We will make slides summarizing the discussions available on the conference web site. Those who attend this session may be added as contributors to these slides.
Level of Participation:
Attendees are encouraged to ask questions and share their own experiences and plans while participating in the discussion. We will work with participants to brainstorm solutions to any concerns they have faced or might face as they move forward with the Blueprint feature.
Session Goals:
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Discuss the pros and cons of using Blueprint Courses in Canvas and best practices for various use cases of this feature.
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Describe unexpected behaviors of Blueprint Courses and the unintended consequences these behaviors can create.
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Explain and brainstorm workarounds that enable getting the maximum benefit from Blueprint Courses while avoiding unintended effects.