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How To Import/Copy Courseware and Activities from one Moodle Course to another

Once you have set up a Moodle Course, you can copy all or some of the Courseware and Activities, such as Assignments, Quizzes, you have set up into other courses. This process is known as Importing and uses the Moodle Import tool.

Copied items will include settings such as due dates and grade settings, but will not include Learner submissions to activities, such as Forum posts.

NOTE: If you need to import an entire course, see How to Backup and Restore a Moodle Course

Before you begin:

Required Knowledge and Moodle Access: Only Teachers and Course Administrators can import and export course material. You will need this level of permission for both the courses: the one you export from and the one you import to. This function is not available to Non-Editing Teachers.

1

Set Up the Course you wish to import into

How to Add and/or Edit a Moodle Course

2

Prepare Items to Copy (Optional)

Before you start importing content, we recommend doing a little preparation in the course you are copying from.

Because the Import tool requires you to import the Section that contains any item you want to copy, and will merge those Sections into the Sections already in your target course, it will be easier to find the imported items in your new course if you make copies of the items to copy and move them into an unused Section at the bottom of the course you are copying from. This can also prevent any unwanted content such as Section summaries from being added to the course you are copying to.

Note: This step is especially important if the target course already contains any content.

  1. Open the course you will copy item(s)
  2. Click Turn Editing On
  3. At the bottom of the course page, click the Increase the number of sections button (+) to create a new Section. You will use this section to hold duplicates of the items you wish to copy
  4. For each item you wish to copy, click Edit, then select Duplicate. Duplicate resources or activities appear immediately below the original. Drag the Duplicate items into the newly created section

Note: If the course you are copying from is in use, to avoid confusion for your Learners, you should hide the Section you created for the duplicate items.

3

Import Items into the Target (New) Course
  1. Open the course you wish to import item(s) into
  2. In the Administration block, under Course Administration, Click Import
    • The Find a Course to import data from page will open (Note: If you do not see the course you wish to copy on the list of courses, enter the course name or course number in the Search field and click Search)
  3. Under Select a Course, select the radio button for the course you will copy from and click Continue
  4. On the Initial Settings page, under Backup settings, select the check box for the types of content to copy (activities and resources, blocks, filters, calendar events, and/or question bank); all will be selected by default, then click Next.
    • The Schema settings page opens showing the sections on the course page you are copying and the activities and resources they contain
  5. On the Schema settings page you will select the item(s) to copy.  By default, all sections and the items in them are selected. Click None (at top) to deselect all Sections and the activities and resources they contain
  6. Scroll down to locate the Section you created for the items you will copy into your course and select the checkbox for the Section and the checkbox(es) for the item(s) to copy
  7. Click Next
    • The Confirmation and Review page will open. Review the items. Items that will be copied have a green check mark. Items that will not be copied have a red X
      • To make changes, Click Previous (at the bottom) to return to the previous setup page
  8. Once selections are correct, click Perform Import
    • You should see a progress bar as the import process proceeds.  Once the import process is complete, a confirmation message appears
  9. Click Continue
    • You will be returned to your course page with the Section containing the copied item(s) added.  As needed, move each copied item into the Section where you want it to appear
Important Note!

If you followed the instructions above to set up a new section in the originating course (Step 2), but do not have as many sections in your new course, you may see a message indicating there is “orphaned” content. Click (at the bottom) to create enough new sections for the copied content to appear. Once the copied items are visible you can drag them into the Section where they will be used in the new course.

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