Assignment/Teams copy

Question

Hello Teams community ,

Is there a way to...

A) copy or clone assignments?

B) copy or clone a Team without transferring students

If a teacher has created a Team and/or several assignments, then wants to replicate that structure to another Team, it would be a massive time saver to be able to clone Team sites and assignements for that purpose.

To add to this, I note from a video dating back to 2020, it seems that only Teams and channel structures can be copied without content. This will be a massive disappointment to users in an educational setting, wherein teachers may have the responsibility to rollover anything between 20-200 courses. Imagine the administrative overhead for perfoming file uploads for that many Teams!

Any time saving workarounds, front-end or back-end would be appreciated?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Hello Didi,

Thanks for looking into this. At the risk of overstating my query, I did add a final paragraph to say I had seen the method you refer to in a video dated in 2020. The issue with the method in that video, and the one you have described above, is that it only replicates the folders (for Team and Channel) without the content.

Imagine you are a teacher in a school or university and you are responsble for 50 different Teams (each Team being a class). Let's say that you also have 50 resources (Assignments, Files, OneNotes and other Apps) and you would like to replicate them to those Teams. However, because Teams only permits you to replicate the folder structure (channels, tabs), you need to upload all 50 resources, 50 times. So you have now had to perform that task 50x50 = 2,500 times. That is not a reasonable expectation.

Our organisation is moving from a platform that enabled teachers to clone courses and resources, to a new platform (MS Teams) which apparently only permits cloning of courses. The administartors have a serious challenge on their hands when it comes to rolling over the courses/Teams, from year to year.

Regards

David

Answer 2

Perhaps Microsoft WANT educational users to Switch to Google Classroom ?

It takes a LOT of time to upload Teaching and Revision files to you new Team. Teachers / Educators don't have lots of spare time to fanny about re-creating Teams they made the year before

Certainly MS have had plenty of notice. Perhaps they haven't asked educators about it.

Down to you Microsoft ......................

Answer 3

I have the same issue and have been hoping that Microsoft would come out with an update that would allow teachers to copy everything in a Team to another Team. I want all of my posts in a channel, all the assignments that I have created, all of the files and folders to be copied to another Team. As of right now, I am having to spend HOURS copying things from one Team to another. This is a con of using Microsoft Teams as an LMS. I am in charge of creating and copying courses for teachers to reuse the next school year. Microsoft Teams for Education is making this task a NIGHTMARE for me. I want to have an option to copy everything, excluding members to a new Team. We currently use Blackboard as another LMS in our district and Blackboard gives us the option to select the pieces of the course that we want copied, including ALL content. It takes a matter of minutes for my whole course, including assignments, to be copied over and ready to use. PLEASE Microsoft, come out with an update BEFORE the next school year.

Answer 4

Hi, Mr,

My name is Didi. I'm happy to help you today.

Other users workaround to 'duplicate' a team is by selecting the 'Create a team using an existing team as a template' option when creating a new team. Doing so will copy channels, tabs, and settings:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/creat...

You can also then move files:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/move...

Then, when creating an assignment in the new team, you can choose 'From existing' to choose the class where you originally created the assignment:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/repos...

You can also set up a Class Notebook in Teams using existing content:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/set-u...

It is also suggested to archive the old team so you could still access it as needed.

Best regards,