How to export your course material from Canvas

The University of the Arts announced they're closing — in seven days! Here's some information to help you save your files

NOTE: This material is outside of the typical information I share in this space, but Substack seemed like the best place for me to share it. I promise I’ll be talking comics again Monday!

Last night, The University of the Arts announced that the 150-year-old institution is closing — and they’re giving students, faculty, and staff a whopping seven days’ notice.

I have taught Storytelling and TV Story Analysis at UArts since 2018.* So this morning, after brewing an extra-strong pot of coffee, I started backing up my course materials. Like many educational institutions, UArts uses Learning Management Software called Canvas. So, I had to learn how to download my course materials on the fly. After all, I put a lot of work into those files — uploading sample scripts… quizzes… heck, I even recorded audiobook-style mp3s of my reading assignments for my students who learn better audially. I don’t want to lose that stuff. My vocal performance on The Hero’s Journey alone is worth keeping for posterity! And if I ever teach again, I don’t want to have to recreate it all from scratch.

I’m posting the directions here in case anyone else needs them. Since no one knows how long we’ll have access to Canvas, I advise doing this as soon as possible.

CC BY 2.0 Ajay Suresh

Download your Canvas course

• In the main Canvas dashboard, navigate to your Courses (the book icon)

• Click All Courses at the top

• Scroll down to the Past Enrollments section

• Click on the course you'd like to save (be sure to save the most recent version — Spring 2024, for example)

• Click the course you'd like to save

• Scroll down to Settings in the lefthand column and click on it

• In the righthand column, click Export Course Content

• Select Export Type: Course

• This will initiate a process that gathers all of your course materials and packages them into a compressed IMSCC file. You'll get an email when it is ready to be downloaded

• Download this file and back it up

If your next position uses course software based on Common Cartridge, you can upload it, and you won't have to recreate all of the materials you've been using at UArts. Common Cartridge is used in Canvas, as well as Moodle, Blackboard and Schoolology.

Uploading your course to Canvas

Navigate to your blank course and open it...

• Click on Import Existing Content in the menu on the right

• Navigate to that IMSCC file you saved.

• Upload it

• Presto, you have all of your saved course materials.

Fun Fact: This IMSCC file is actually just a ZIP file. That means, on a Mac, you can change .imscc to .zip and — after you confirm the change with your Mac — double-click it and get all of your files in their original formats — PDFs, mp3s... everything you uploaded to Canvas is there.

Don't get freaked out by all those .xml files like I did. Scroll all the way down to a folder called Web Resources, and you'll see the good stuff — Lecture Notes, Uploaded Media, Course Images, etc.

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*Please don’t worry about me. I taught at UArts because I genuinely enjoyed it. To me, this announcement means an extra day in my studio, and that’s hardly a punishment. But there are students, faculty, and staff at UArts who are truly suffering right now, and I ask you to keep those folks in your thoughts.