How do I import selected items between courses?

If you wish to import items from an older course to a newer course or duplicate course items between sections, simply follow the steps below.

Please note: for all activities and date restricted items that you import, you will need to update the dates & times to reflect the current course/section. Learn how to update multiple dates at one time in this FAQ.

  1. Login to Moodle. Click on your new blank class, in other words the class into which you wish to import the items.
  2. On the main page of your course, look for the ‘Edit’ icon to the right of the name of the course. It looks like a gray gear with a small arrow pointed down just to the right of the gear.
  3. Click on the gear to drop-down the administration settings.
  4. Select the “Import” option.
  5. On the next screen, click the radio button next to your course that contains the items you wish to import. If you do not see the course that contains the items, you can search for it by course ID (HIS 135, for instance) and/or name. The ‘search’ feature here is exact character so ‘HIS 135 2016 Fall’ won’t bring any results, but ‘HIS 135/1-2016/Fall’ will.
  6. Click the ‘Continue’ button:
  7. On the next screen, keep everything checked. If you know that you wish to import all of your previous content, you can click the ‘Jump to final step’ to import everything from the previous course. If you wish to pick and choose which items you import, click the ‘Next’ button.
  8. On the next screen, you choose to can select none or all of the content through the ‘Select’ setting at the top. You can also go through manually and uncheck any item that you do not wish to import. You must keep the weeks/topics checked when you have an item in that week/topic which you wish to import. 
  9. In Moodle 3.2, you can also select by the type of activity or resource by expanding the ‘Show type options.’ For instance you could select ‘None’ at first and then have Moodle select ‘All’ of the quiz activities.
  10. Remember to select an item manually, you must keep the week/topic the item is in checked as well. For instance, you could not check the syllabus file resource, if the whole section isn’t also selected:
    To bring in the syllabus, you would need to check both:
  11. Then scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the ‘Next’ button.
  12. Verify that the next screen matches which items you chose.
  13. Scroll down and click the ‘Perform Import’ button.
    NOTE: Be extremely careful to only click the ‘Perform Import’ button once. It will take a while, depending on how many items are in your course. If you click the button again during the process, the files you import can get corrupted and the activities can be broken.
  14. You will see a status bar, showing you how the import is progressing:
  15. When the import is completed, you should receive a message saying, “Import complete. Click continue to return to the course.” Click the ‘Continue’ button.
  16. You will be brought back to your course’s homepage. You should now see the items imported in whichever matches the week they were in, in the previous course. For instance, a quiz that was is week 2 of your previous course will appear in week 2 of your current course.
  17. LAST STEP: Go into each activity or resource with date-related restrictions or date-related information and update them for the appropriate semester. If not, your assignment may open and close months before your course begins! In the latest version of Moodle, you can update dates for a course on one single report. Learn how to update multiple dates at once in this FAQ!