How's New Course Copy Going? Anyone adopting or testing it?

Adam Nemeroff

I know that Panopto released new Course Copy. Super excited to hear more and concerned about certain feature shifts as a part.

• Have you adopted new Course Copy? Finding issues?
• Are you currently testing it? Finding issues?
• How are you planning to roll it out eventually?
• Do you have auto folder provisioning via Canvas? We do and that seems to be a potential issue with this.
• Do you have the option disabled for copying Zoom and Scheduled Recordings disabled from copies?
• If you have adopted it -- is it better, worse, or indifferent?

Feel free to reply in line here with copy and paste!

Michael Espey

Are we adopting/testing? Short answer, yes, but haven't yet.

We tried adopting it but ran into an issue, which has been fixed, but I ended up rolling the change back right away. In short, the copy jobs were not queuing because of a bug with CCv2 and the LMS hierarchy copy feature. We've been using CCv1 for the start of Spring 2022, but I plan to roll v2 out as soon as I've verified that it is working fully for our structure.

We've had a ton of problems with Quizzes moving from term to term and that has been a blocker for us in marketing that feature more. My hope is that this feature (CCv2) will help with those cases which has been a major driver in pushing for CCv2. Another major driver is to reduce the overhead needed when an instructor wants to direct students to the navigation bar tool for lectures/videos. With CCv1, this just wasn't an option that instructors really wanted. The only alternative was for us to copy in bulk or for them to copy 1:1.

I am planning to start testing again once we get a bit deeper into the semester and the goal is still to roll it out again soon as I see it as a major improvement for the "standard" users. In my initial testing, it was great and does what it is intended to do, but it is more limited than I would like for those that might fall outside of the standard use cases. Specifically, I would like to see more choices given to the individual. When the job is queued, I would like to see the creators be notified and prompted to select if they would like to copy any Panopto content (some don't, and the tool as is would create a good bit of cleanup), if they want to copy Zoom content, if they want to copy videos outside of the course folder that they have creator access to, if they want to copy contents from just the root or to include sub-folders, etc. I also think it is a problem that it is either all manual or all automatic, that just isn't a workable solution and I wish there had been more opportunity for demos and feedback. This could've been an exceptional improvement with those course-level controls.

Provisioning folders? We don't provision in advance.

We provision folders JiT in Canvas. We looked at provisioning in advance, but for us, it didn't really offer any benefit as almost all of our classroom use comes from Canvas first. Those that don't use Canvas wouldn't be in scope here anyway.

Zoom, etc.? Both off, but only becuase this should've been a course control.

We plan to turn off the option for Zoom and Scheduled recordings. This is because many of the Zoom recordings are going to include student names and such from the previous course sections. Because of that, those materials can't be copied forward and provided to the current students without that information being redacted. I don't want to see a situation where that is copied forward automatically without an instructor knowing...this is why the instructor needs to be given these toggles when they are copying. They know what is in their course (hopefully). As an admin, I don't know what they've shared, how they've shared, or why, so why am I making decisions on how those materials are treated with site-level controls? Should there be restrictions and defaults at the site level? Certainly, but if at all possible, these decisions should be made at the course and department levels.

Is it better, worse, or indifferent? Yes?

From what I've tested so far, it is much better than the old for most courses we have, but it doesn't go far enough for me to call it "good" or "done" yet. In general, I would add that once a workflow exists, it probably shouldn't fully go away while there are still valid use cases for it (there are certainly cases where CCv1 is/was a better experience for a specific course); the default (CCv2) can change, but the old way should still be available in one way or another. It was also disappointing to see another "all in" feature rollout where all of the flexibility is at the site level.

TL:DR - It's good and is an improvement for the standard user, but it leaves some non-standard users with a good bit of cleanup to do. Having course-level controls would almost get rid of those problems and make it a much more flexible tool but I don't think that is a non-starter for us.

Adam Nemeroff

As always, @Michael Espey -- you're the best.

We are exploring testing/timing beginning with a stakeholders gathering tomorrow.

Some brief notes on us:

• We want to turn Zoom and Scheduled Recordings copy off
• Our library reserves team and classroom recordings teams use the auto folder provisioning and click through to create on individual occasions. A word of wisdom -- if you use folder provisioning and the "Import Content" happens after provision -- it doesn't work. I have huge issues with this approach. Glad to talk further.
• I think we're unclear about which copy option from the options to use. I think we're thinking either using the current option, the make a copy, or even none.
• Increasingly we're encouraging people to use the LTI deep linking because it's more consistent and we've had less support issues around it.

Thanks and I'm glad to talk further as you dig into testing.