Bruin Learn - Blueprint Courses
- Nashra Mahmood
- Tom Garbelotti
What is a Blueprint Course?
A blueprint course on BruinLearn is a course that holds content you want to share with any number of associated courses. It can be used to create a “master” site with commonly used materials such as language adoption, or placement exams.
How do we create a Blueprint Course?
On the left hand panel of your Bruinlearn site, click on “admin” and select “Humanities”. This will take you to a page that houses all the courses under “Humanities”. On the top right of the screen, click on “ + Course” option. It will prompt a small window asking you to fill out the course name, reference code, select the subaccount you want to house the blueprint course under and if you want, select the enrollment term. Then click add course.
This will create a new course, and you can select the “enable as blueprint course” option from the course settings. Settings can be found on the left hand panel of your course site. Note: An existing course can be turned into a blueprint site this way too.
How to associate courses with Blueprint course?
In the Blueprint course, add content either by copying another canvas course or creating new assignments/modules/quizzes from scratch. Then select the dotted square icon the top right corner of the screen, next to the “student view” button. It allows one to associate or link ‘normal’ courses with the blueprint course.
To add a course as an associated course for the blueprint, click on “Associations”. It will take you to a page where you can find and “associate” courses by title, short name of SIS ID.
Users can also click on > Courses and it will show a list of courses listed under the subaccount under which the blueprint course is created. Upon selecting the course you want to associate, click done, and Bruinlearn will automatically begin syncing the content onto the associated courses. Note: Bruinlearn does not allow you to associate blueprint courses with another blueprint course. Blueprint courses will not show up under > courses.
Locked editing options vs. Unlocked
Once you have added content, you will notice that each item type has a lock option next to the publishing option.
If you hover on the dotted square, the lock option will appear.
This lock option allows the course designer/instructor of the blueprint course to lock or unlock content. By locking content on the blueprint course, the content on associated courses also gets locked. In other words, course instructors of associated courses are unable to make changes to locked portion of their course site. Only the instructor/course designer of the blueprint courses has the ability to control which items can be edited (unlocked) and which ones cannot (locked). By default, associated course instructors can edit any course content added from the blueprint course. You can lock editing options for instructors using the lock content options in the course settings.
Bruinlearn offers two ways to lock editing options on blueprint courses: General Locked Objects and Locked Objects by Type.
The General Locked Objects option allows you to disable editing for content, points possible, due dates, and availability dates for any locked course content item. After checking the general locked object option, users are prompted to select the object types they wish to lock. Once the General Content lock is enabled, an associated course instructor will not be able to edit content for any locked course content item.
The Locked Objects by Type option allows you to disable specific editing options for assignments, discussions, pages, files, and quizzes. Upon selecting ‘locked objects for type’ option, users are prompted to choose editing locks for content, points possible, due dates, and availability dates by course content item. So, if you choose to lock Points for Assignments, instructors in associated courses will not be able to modify points for any locked assignments.
Associated course Instructors can view synced and locked content but they cannot modify locked objects in locked content. When instructors edit locked course content, Bruinlearn will display a locked attributes message.
How to sync associated courses?
Let’s say you have added new content to your blueprint course and would like to sync it with your associated courses. To do that, click the Blueprint Courses icon on the top right of the course site. It will give you an additional option called unsynced changes.
If you click on unsynced changes it will show you the new additions made to blueprint site, and also give you the option to send a notification to the associated courses along with syncing the course settings. Note: Syncing does not make changes to any new content associated instructors include in their course sites. For more information about syncing exceptions, please refer to the Blueprint Courses documentation in the Canvas Community here: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Video-Guide/Blueprint-Courses-Overview/ta-p/383201