Canvas Learning Management System (LMS) introduced Blueprint Courses as a transformative feature in June 2017, revolutionizing course design and management for educators and administrators. This powerful tool allows for the creation of master courses – or blueprints – from which associated courses can be populated and updated, ensuring consistency and efficiency across departments or institutions. For those focused on optimizing instructional design and looking for scalable solutions, understanding and implementing Blue Print Design within Canvas is essential.
This article delves into the intricacies of Blueprint Courses, drawing insights from initial explorations and community experiences to provide a comprehensive guide. Whether you are an administrator considering enabling this feature, an instructional designer crafting course templates, or an instructor working with associated courses, this guide will illuminate the best practices and potential pitfalls of leveraging blue print design to enhance your online learning environment.
Understanding the Fundamentals of Blue Print Design in Canvas
Before diving into implementation, it’s crucial to grasp the core concepts of blue print design within Canvas. Blueprint Courses serve as templates, allowing designated instructors to design a master course structure, complete with content, assignments, and settings. These blueprints are then linked to associated courses, which receive synced updates from the master course.
This system is particularly beneficial for:
- Maintaining Consistency: Ensure all sections of a course, or courses across a department, adhere to a standardized design and quality.
- Efficient Content Distribution: Quickly deploy updates, new materials, and standardized assessments across multiple courses simultaneously.
- Curriculum Management: Streamline curriculum changes and ensure alignment across all course instances.
However, effective blue print design requires careful planning and clear communication. Missteps can lead to confusion and duplicated efforts. Therefore, a strategic approach is paramount.
Planning Your Blue Print Design Strategy
The name “Blueprint Courses” emphasizes the critical role of planning, much like architectural blue print design. Successful implementation hinges on meticulous preparation and transparent communication among all stakeholders. Instructors designing blueprint courses, often acting as instructional designers, hold significant influence over associated courses. Unforeseen issues can largely be avoided with proactive planning and open communication channels.
Crucially, all users involved in blue print design should customize their Canvas notification settings to receive timely updates, especially regarding Blueprint Sync notifications. This ensures everyone stays informed about changes and updates pushed from the blueprint course.
While some scenarios might initially seem daunting, the benefits of blueprint courses for enhancing course design and consistency are undeniable. For instance, embedding sub-account outcomes into courses becomes seamless, eliminating the need for individual instructors to manually add them. Although embedded rubrics cannot be locked—a point raised early in the feature’s release—simply distributing them efficiently is a significant advantage.
Just as you would carefully select an architect for a building project, choosing the right instructors to design and manage blueprint courses is paramount. “With great power comes great responsibility,” and in this context, that power lies with the blueprint course instructor/designer. This guide is primarily intended for these individuals, as well as anyone aiming to fully utilize this powerful Canvas feature for optimized blue print design implementation.
Timing Considerations in Blue Print Course Implementation
Timing is a critical element in leveraging blue print design effectively. As highlighted in Canvas documentation, any existing content in a blueprint course will sync immediately when associated courses are linked. If a department intends to use a high-quality existing course as a blueprint, content importation into a newly created blueprint shell is straightforward. However, it is imperative for the blueprint course instructor to thoroughly review and refine the content before associating any courses. This preemptive check prevents the immediate propagation of any unintended errors or outdated materials to associated courses.
Conversely, when associating courses that already contain content, the sync process merges content similar to a standard course import. This can lead to potential duplication, especially if instructors in associated courses have already begun adding materials independently. For example, if both a blueprint course and an associated course contain an “Assignment 1,” the sync may result in duplicate assignments in the associated course.
Example of duplicate assignments arising from timing conflicts in blue print design synchronization.
Canvas provides a warning message when associating courses to a blueprint course that already contains content, alerting administrators to this potential issue.
Canvas warning message highlighting potential content duplication during blueprint course association.
Instructors in associated courses can easily identify newly synced items by the distinctive blueprint icon that appears beside them. Effective planning and communication are again emphasized to avoid scenarios where instructors are inadvertently asked to remove their pre-existing content due to blueprint synchronization.
The Impact of Publishing in Blue Print Design
Publishing content within a blueprint course requires careful consideration. If a blueprint course item is published before synchronization, that published state is maintained in associated courses. While instructors in associated courses can unpublish synced items, students may still briefly see or receive notifications about newly published content depending on their notification settings. In higher education, instructors generally prefer to control the publishing schedule within their courses. Therefore, premature publishing in a blueprint course can disrupt instructor autonomy and student experience.
Locking Content: Balancing Control and Flexibility in Blue Print Design
Content locking is a pivotal aspect of blue print design, offering control over which elements of a course template instructors in associated courses can modify. The Blueprint button in a blueprint course effectively acts as a “Lock me!” control, contingent on administrator settings defining lockable items.
Unlocked items, once synced, are fully editable by instructors in associated courses, just like any other Canvas object. Crucially, if an unlocked item is modified in an associated course, subsequent blueprint syncs will not overwrite these local edits.
However, the behavior of unlocked items isn’t entirely conventional. Consider an assignment created in a blueprint course and synced to associated courses. If an instructor in an associated course modifies the assignment title and description, these changes are preserved even after subsequent syncs—unless the blueprint assignment is later locked.
Example of an unlocked assignment in an associated course with instructor-added modifications.
If the blueprint course instructor then decides to lock the assignment and re-sync, the locked status propagates to associated courses, overwriting any local modifications made by instructors in those courses.
The same assignment after being locked in the blueprint course, overwriting previous instructor modifications in the associated course.
This highlights that while unlocked assignments offer editing flexibility, transitioning an item from unlocked to locked post-sync can lead to unintended overwrites and loss of instructor-specific customizations.
Understanding “Exceptions” in Blue Print Sync History
The sync history within blueprint courses may display “exceptions,” indicating instances where updates were not fully applied to associated courses. Exceptions typically arise when instructors in associated courses have already edited unlocked items.
For example, if an assignment is synced from a blueprint course with only a title (no description or attachments) and an instructor in an associated course adds a detailed description, this local modification creates an exception. If the blueprint course instructor later updates the same assignment (adding an attachment, for instance) and re-syncs, the attachment will propagate, but the description added in the associated course will be preserved, triggering an exception.
Assignment in an associated course with locally added instructions.
Blueprint course assignment updated with a file attachment and modified instructions.
Sync history displaying an exception due to local modifications in an associated course.
The file attachment syncs successfully, but the assignment update is flagged as an exception because the associated course instructor’s edits are prioritized. Canvas recognizes the locally edited assignment as instructor-created content and prevents overwriting it during subsequent syncs, provided it wasn’t initially locked in the blueprint course.
File Attachments and Locking in Blue Print Design
When creating locked assignments with file attachments in a blueprint course, it’s crucial to remember that files are locked separately from the items they are attached to. Using the previous example, even if an assignment with a file attachment is locked via the Blueprint button (which, as discussed, overwrites local edits), the attached file itself is not automatically locked.
A locked assignment in a blueprint course with a file attachment.
If an instructor in an associated course navigates to the Files area, they might inadvertently delete a file that is attached to a now-locked blueprint assignment, as files are unlocked by default.
An instructor in an associated course deleting an unlocked file that is attached to a blueprint assignment.
Even though the file displays the blueprint icon, it remains unlocked unless explicitly locked in the blueprint course. Deleting such a file will result in broken links within the locked assignment in associated courses, leading to student access issues. The key takeaway is to lock both the assignment and any associated files within the blueprint course to maintain content integrity in associated courses.
The overarching principle is to advise instructors in associated courses to exercise caution when interacting with any content bearing the blueprint icon, whether locked or unlocked. Ideally, blueprint course instructors should avoid changing the locked/unlocked status of items after the initial sync to prevent confusion and potential data loss.
Flexibility with Discussions and Quizzes in Blue Print Design
While content locking offers significant control, certain elements within Discussions and Quizzes in blueprint courses exhibit unique behaviors. For instance, even if “Points” is set as a locked item in blueprint settings, Discussion options, such as grading settings, remain editable in associated courses. This means instructors in associated courses can uncheck the “Graded” option for a synced discussion, effectively making it ungraded despite the blueprint’s intended settings.
Locked content indicators on a discussion topic, highlighting editable options.
Similarly, Quiz options can also be modified in associated courses, even for quizzes with locked content. This flexibility acknowledges the diverse pedagogical approaches instructors may take with discussions and quizzes.
However, quizzes also present a contrasting exception concerning points.
Quiz Points and Content Locking Interplay
In quizzes, points may become locked even if “Points” is not explicitly selected as a locked item in blueprint course settings. For a quiz synced from a blueprint course where only “Content” is locked, instructors in associated courses will find that the quiz content is indeed locked, but unexpectedly, so are the points per question.
Locked content indicators on a quiz, showing content as locked but points implicitly locked as well.
Although only “content” is indicated as locked, the point values for individual questions become non-editable in associated courses. The pencil icon for editing points within quiz questions disappears.
Quiz question displaying the absence of an editing pencil, indicating points are not editable.
This implicit locking of points when content is locked can impact instructors who need to adjust point values in their specific course contexts. Furthermore, in legacy Canvas quizzes exceeding 25 questions, locking content can inadvertently prevent instructors from viewing correct answers due to the disabled “Show Question Details” checkbox. (This issue has been resolved in Quizzes.Next).
Deleting Items from a Blue Print Course and Associated Courses
Deleting items from a blueprint course has cascading effects on associated courses. Locked items, when deleted from the blueprint and synced, are also removed from all associated courses. Unlocked items also get removed upon deletion and sync, unless they have been edited in any way by instructors in associated courses. If an unlocked item has been locally modified, it is treated as instructor-owned content and remains untouched by blueprint sync operations, even if it retains the blueprint icon in associated courses. Such instances are typically recorded as “exceptions” in the sync history.
Course Settings Synchronization
Course settings, while not lockable, can be synchronized from a blueprint course to associated courses. This feature allows for consistent grading schemes and other course-level settings to be uniformly applied across multiple courses, particularly useful if sub-account settings are not consistently applied.
Mnemonic for Remembering Lockable Items
What types of items can be locked in blue print design? The lockable items, as listed in Canvas settings, are: Assignments, Discussions, Pages, Files, and Quizzes. A simple mnemonic to remember them is PDQ-AF: Pretty Darn Quick (PDQ) syncing, and Assignments to Files (AF).
Conclusion: Embracing Blue Print Design for Enhanced Course Management
Blue print design in Canvas LMS offers a powerful solution for streamlining course creation, ensuring consistency, and facilitating efficient content management across educational institutions. By understanding the nuances of planning, timing, publishing, locking, and synchronization, educators and administrators can effectively leverage this feature to create high-quality, standardized learning experiences. While complexities around locking behaviors and exceptions require careful attention, the benefits of blue print design for optimized course design and scalability are substantial. As you integrate blue print design into your Canvas environment, remember that thoughtful planning and clear communication are the cornerstones of successful implementation. Explore how this feature can transform your approach to online course development and elevate the consistency and quality of your educational offerings.
