VoiceThread Docs / VT in your Learning Management System / Instructors / Course Copying

If your institution has integrated VoiceThread using LTI 1.3 with deep linking, that means that your VoiceThread activities will copy automatically when the course is copied in the LMS. Any LMS that supports LTI 1.3 integrations should work in the same way.

Note: If your institution is still integrated via LTI 1.1, then content will not copy automatically. Scroll to the next section for details on LTI 1.1.

Automatic Course Copy (LTI 1.3)

When you are first creating a template course, just build your VoiceThread activities normally. Refer to the link building guide for how to use deep linking in your LMS.

Links built in this way will copy over to any “child” courses or sections automatically. If you create a “Create Assignment” in the template course, then you will also have a “Create Assignment” in the same location in the child course. There is nothing special you need to do.

Some important things to know about how copies work

  • The moment anyone (instructor of student) clicks on a VoiceThread link in a course copy, that is the moment the copying logic runs.
  • The course copy logic runs once per course. This means that if someone clicks on a link in the course copy, and then later you add a new VoiceThread activity to the parent/template course, it will not copy over. The copying logic has already run the one-and-only time that it will.
  • When a course is copied, VoiceThread makes copies of all of the assets and then uses those for the new course/section. This way no matter how many copies you make of the same course, each section will have its own copies of the assignments and will not be intermingled with other courses/sections.
  • Copies of clean template/master courses are ideal. If you are copying a used course, however, then VoiceThread includes all instructor content and excludes all student content for the new copy. This means that the instructor who created all the content in the parent/master course should remain enrolled as an instructor there so their content is included, and you might need to take a look at the course copy to make sure any of the instructor comments that were copied are in response to students and need to be removed manually.
  • In most LMSes, the source or parent course used for the copy is the oldest in the lineage. For example, if you have a Spring 2020 course, copy Spring 2021 from that, and then copy Spring 2022 from Spring 2021, then the source is still Spring 2020. We hope to be able to change that in the future so that you can iterate more easily when copying from used courses.

Manual Course Re-use (LTI 1.1)

If you are still using LTI 1.1, then the links to your activities will copy over to the new course, but they will not be configured. The instructor will need to go back into each link and set up the activity again. This is the same process you used to set up the activities in the original course. You just need to repeat that process for each activity.


Migrating to LTI 1.3

If your institution is still on LTI 1.1 and you are using an LMS that supports LTI 1.3, we recommend upgrading as soon as it is feasible. LTI 1.1 is technically deprecated and therefore not receiving any updates or security patches from the founding team. Please contact us to work on this migration.