Copying Bulletin Boards

Shannon Craige

Hello! Are teachers able to copy their bulletin boards across multiple classes?

(For departmentalized teachers who teach multiple sections of a course or various courses)

Morgan Kunze

@Shannon Craige Yes! Using the Import button in the bulletin board editor, teachers can assign the imported material to multiple sections of the same course. Start from within one of the classes they want to import to, then go to Edit>Import Material (left hand sidebar) and then choose the course/year they want to copy from. The sections available to import into will be listed as checklist buttons at the bottom of the selection screen. Hope that helps!

Shannon Craige

@Morgan Kunze
Thank you for your response! I'm still getting used to the language, and we don't have our rollover completed to even view an example yet in our own portal….I'm wondering when you say “teachers can assign to multiple sections of the same course” does this limit them to only copying within a course? I'm thinking about an example where a teacher may teach multiple courses, but not necessarily multiple sections within a course.

Candace Chesler

@Shannon Craige - For current content - teachers can post the same material on multiple class sections all at one time. When making the original post - say - a Welcome paragraph that describes grading style and office hours - once they have the post ready, they can scroll down to the section labeled"Publish" - other sections of the same course will be listed, and by clicking “Add More” - teachers can access all other course sections that they teach. Allows them to write the post one time - and post it to as many places as they need.

The Import feature is useful for pulling content from previous academic years. When we have a new teacher - I go back to previous academic years and assign them as a second teacher to the courses that they will be teaching for us in the current year. This allows them to pull in content that the previous teacher used - if they would find that helpful.

Brian Gray

@Candace Chesler & @Shannon Craige - Be careful - don't conflate the word import with the word copy when working with bulletin board content.

The Import process will link the same chunk of text to additional sections - but there is only one chunk of text. If you import the text from a previous year (or from another teacher's section in the current year) and then edit the imported text, that text will change everywhere it appears - including in the previous year's sections.

We had a case that caused problems this week: A teacher is now teaching one section of a course that she did not teach last year.

• I added New Teacher (NT) to one of the sections from last year taught by Original Teacher (OT) so that she could import bulletin board content.
• NT imported the Expectations content from OT's section from last year into her section for this year.
• OT also imported the same content from the section from last year into her section for this year.
• NT edited the content in her section

Because it's the same content (that is - the same chunk of text that appears in several sections over two academic years), the edits appeared in all of those sections - one from last year, one section taught by NT this year, and three sections taught by OT this year.

To complicate this further, NT saw in the editing dialog that the text appeared in ner section and NT's section from this year (and the sections from last year). She unchecked all of the boxes that were not her section for this year, and so removed the content from OT's sections from last year and this year.

NT should have done a copy/paste/edit process to get the original text as a starting point for the her section this year.

This is not the same behavior as I see for Topics. When a Topic is imported, it is copied. Changing the imported topic does NOT change the source. The same topic can appear in multiple sections by adding the topic to those sections (at the bottom of the Settings dialog).