News and Announcements

Canvas (Permissions) - Reset course content for Teachers and Instructional Designers 07/13/21

Posted: 2021-07-13 09:52:41   Expiration: 2021-07-20 09:52:41

Disclaimer: This news item was originally posted on 2021-07-13 09:52:41. Its content may no longer be timely or accurate.

The Digital Learning Environment Team has enabled the "Courses - reset" permission in Canvas for users with the "Teacher" course role or the "Instructional Designer" admin role. This change was made following a recommendation from the Roles and Permissions group, and it applies to the University of Wisconsin System (except for UW Madison) instances of Canvas. The permission allows users to remove all course content from a Canvas course shell while preserving the course details and enrollments.

The Reset Course Content feature can be useful during the pre-semester course design process, if an instructor or designer wants to wipe a course shell clean and start fresh. Users are strongly discouraged from using this feature on course shells which already have student-generated content or interactions in them, since it deletes everything from the course, and the deleted content is not recoverable.

Teachers and Instructional Designers previously had the Courses - Reset permission in many Canvas subaccounts, until a 06/19/21 Canvas Release changed the groupings of Canvas permissions and removed this permission from those roles. On 07/07/21, another Canvas Release separated out the Courses - Reset permission so that it could be given back to Teachers and Instructional Designers. The 07/07/21 Canvas Release also restored the Courses- Reset permission to Institution Admins and Support Admins, with no action needed on our part.

For more information, see:

-- UWSA DLE: Thomas Arendalkowski