CarmenCanvas contains a helpful feature known as Blueprint Courses that, similar to CanvasCommons, allows course content, settings, and updates to be easily shared to other associated courses. Unlike CanvasCommons, the Blueprint Course feature contains a live synching component, which offers a more simplified and efficient way to make changes to multiple sections of a course, even after they have been published.

The feature supports and syncs five different course elements: Assignments, Discussions, Pages, Files, and Quizzes. In addition, it offers the ability to lock various attributes within these five components – including content, points, and due dates – from being edited by instructors in courses associated with the blueprint course. While various course components can be synched and locked across associated courses to maintain a standard form, the feature still allows instructors of associated courses the freedom to add their own Announcements and additional content. These additional items – as they are components of individual sections and not a part of the foundational blueprint course – are not synched across all associated courses and thus allow room for individualization.

For a course to have the ability to become a blueprint course, it cannot already be associated with another blueprint course, and it cannot contain enrolled students before the feature is enabled. Once the course has been created, all course content should be added to the course shell before the blueprint course settings can be defined, which must be done before the course and its associated courses are made available to others. Your CarmenCanvas administrator can help you define which attributes you would like to lock and prevent from being changed in associated courses. Attributes can be locked in one of two ways: by general locked objects or by type.