Canvas: Maintaining external copies of course and student content

Tags Canvas Export

Online@UT (Canvas) is not the system of record for student grades or a long-term repository of instructional material. Be sure to review the information below to learn how to manage and maintain copies both course and student content/submissions.

Course Material

To backup course materials, you can download all course materials or select course materials:

Course (course components and files) - See How do I export a Canvas course? To view the files in the export package, change the extension from .imscc to .zip and treat it as a ZIP file.

The export includes:

  • The Syllabus
  • Files from Files section
  • Content from Pages (e.g., .html files)
  • Additional folders associated with your Assignments

Course files

Quiz content

Student Material

To backup student grades, submissions, and discussion messages:

  • Export to CSV from Grades, which can be read by Microsoft Excel. See How do I export grades in the Gradebook?
  • Export Survey and Quiz responses as CSV files. You can download CSV files to view Student Analysis or Item Analysis for each quiz question to count all student attempts in the statistics. Navigate to Quiz Statistics. For more detailed information about item analysis limitations and calculations, please refer to the Classic Quizzes Quiz Item Analysis.
    • Student Analysis - Displays each student's name, TN ID number, section, question choices, number of attempts, number correct, number incorrect and overall score.
    • Item Analysis - Displays each question, total number correct per question, total number incorrect per question, variance, standard deviation and more.

  • Download Student Assignment Submissions. There are a few places from which instructors can download student submissions:
  • Save and Print Discussion Threads. There is currently not a way to save and print discussion threads through the Canvas interface. Current best practice is to highlight and copy the discussion thread and then paste it into Microsoft Word.