Before the end of the academic year, you need to consider how your existing Canvas courses should be 'rolled over' to create new ones for the new academic year. University policy states that current courses should become an archive to enable students to subsequently refer back to them. Archived courses will appear to enrolled students under their Courses > Past Enrolments.

There is a customised tool in Canvas, available at the sub-account level, called Manage Courses. This enables Local Canvas Coordinators and Unit Administrators to manage the duplication and updating of all the necessary Canvas courses.

How to use the Manage Courses (Rollover) tool

Log in to Canvas and select the Admin tool on the Global Navigation Menu.
In the Navigation menu, select Manage Courses.
The first time you access this plugin tool, you will need to grant it access. Click on the message and follow the prompts.

You will be presented with a list of all courses in your unit's sub-account, showing which ones are ready to roll over:

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Use the All terms drop-down menu to filter the list by term:

Use the course search box, next to the drop-down menu, to search for a specific course. Results will begin to appear after you have entered 3 characters or more.
Select the + Select Course button to add this course to your batch for rolling over. If you are rolling over more than one course for the new academic year, continue to select courses and add them to the batch.

A batch has a limit of 100 courses. Decisions made about the course (i.e. required academic year, and whether to include content) will apply to all courses in the batch. If courses in the batch have different term types, the Manage Courses tool will roll over to the correct term, based on the academic year selected.

Scroll down and select Review and Rollover. A pop-up window appears with additional options:

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Select the required academic year.
By default, only a course shell will be created for the selected academic year. Select the Include content box if you wish to copy content from the existing to the new course. (The Manage Courses FAQ lists the content that will be copied over.)
Use the tick list to select which roles should be included in the enrolments for the new course. Individuals who hold those roles on the current course will be added to the new course with the same role.
- These refer to manual enrolments done in the existing course, using the People tool.
- Student-based roles will not be copied over.
Select the Include groups box if you wish to copy all Oxford groups (from the Group Enrolment Tool) that are in the existing course.
- This will take the adjustment that is being made to the course (e.g. plus one year, 2023-24 to 2024-25) and make the same adjustment to the groups (that are year based). For groups that aren’t year based, the same group will be enrolled in the new course.
- The desired new group should exist, as Oxford groups are now being provisioned into the future.
- Be aware that when rolling over GET Rules, the dates on sections aren’t persisted.
Select Rollover.

This will make a copy of each course in the batch.

- Each new course will have the same title as the original one, and will have the Term automatically set to the forthcoming academic year.

- If used, the Start Date and End Date of the course will be automatically advanced (but can still be manually adjusted later, if required).
- Dates attached to content items (e.g. assignment due dates) will be automatically advanced if there is a Start Date and End Date (including courses set to 'Academic Year', but not those set to 'Entry Year').

Notes:

It is possible to roll over a course with the same name into the same academic year. There isn't a system notification to warn you that a duplicate course is being created. If you wish to keep the course, but need to change the name, use the 3-dot menu icon and select Edit to change the name of the course. If you wish to delete the course, use the 3-dot menu icon and select Delete.
Offer Holder groups in the Group Enrolment Tool (GET) are NOT included when checking the option ‘Include Groups’ while rolling over a course in the Manage Courses tool. This is to ensure that next year's offer holders do not get inappropriate access to Canvas courses.
If you do want to give access to a particular offer holding group in the rolled over course, then you may add them manually using the People tool.

Show History

In due course, you may wish to view the history of your rollover actions. This may be accessed from the three dots menu alongside a particular course. The Rollover History provides a list of the associated parent and child courses and you can easily access them from the links provided in the list:

Show History will provide a list of all previous rollovers related to that course. It will display information including who created the course, with a time and date stamp, it will show if content, enrolments and groups were included too.

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Next to the Included enrolments tick box is an 'i' icon. Select this icon to show which roles were included in the enrolment:

The Status (three dots) menu also allows you to delete the newly rolled-over course if something is not as it should be. You would then be able to initiate the roll-over process again, if necessary.
Please refer to the Manage courses FAQ for information on restrictions as to which rolled-over courses are eligible for deletion.

Before you start using the tool, carefully consider the process and implications for your particular courses.
After you have rolled over existing courses, some work will be required to update and check the new ones. Refer to our page on steps after rollover to guide you through these steps.
There is a Manage courses FAQ which povides more information around common questions.