Are there some pages you consistently use in courses? As an author, you can star a page to reuse/copy in that course or another course. It's a great time-saver!
Page types you might want to star and reuse/copy include:
Introductory pages (some content may change, but the structure is very similar).
Ice-breaker type pages with discussions and prior knowledge activities.
A page that explains the support available to learners.
Pages with particular task set-ups that are commonly used across your courses.
Close of the course and next steps pages.
The general process of how this works is:
View a course and navigate to the page(s) you want to reuse/copy in other courses.
Star that page to add it to your starred pages collection.
When you're on a page for a course you're building, you can choose to add a page from your starred list.
You'll get a notification (in the bell) when the page has finished. Click the link in the notification (or refresh the page) if you're already on the page and you'll see your new page there.
We'll describe these steps in more detail below.
How to star a page
Pages can only be starred from published courses. This means in order to star a page, you need to go into that course via View, rather than Edit.
Now you can navigate to the page you want to star.
To star a page, select the star next to the title of the page.
You'll then see that page listed in your starred pages.
How to add a starred page to a course
Once you have at least one starred page, you can add those starred pages to courses as you author them in Create.
Navigate to the area of the course you want to add the starred page to.
Select + to add a new element, choose Add page > Add starred page.
How to edit your starred pages collection
When you open your starred pages collection (via the top right), you get the option to delete pages from your starred pages collection.
When to use templates and when to use starred pages
Both templates and starred pages can help save authors time, and you'll need to think about your particular workflow and context to figure out exactly which you might use.
Creating a template might be your best option if many of your courses follow a particular flow or have a whole section that is largely the same across courses e.g. a section that outlines support, your organisation, rules and so on.
Using starred pages might be your best option if you want to quickly copy a page (or 10, or 20) to a new course. It might also be useful for a common set up of tasks.
Tips and trouble-shooting
Legacy activities and tasks
At this stage, you can star and reuse both legacy activity pages and tasks pages. But, you can't mix activities into a tasks course (and vice versa). So, this means that if you add a starred page with legacy activities into a task course, the activity will not be able to be copied over.
Unable to see the star by the page title
You can only star published pages. So, if you can't see the star on a page, publish that course and then make sure you select View to go into the course again.
Page you've just added is still loading
Tasks can take a little while to copy over, so you might see a grey placeholder for tasks. Simply wait for the notifcation, then click the notification to see the starred page copied into your course.
Starring other author's pages
At this stage, you can only star pages from your own courses. That is, pages from published courses you were an author of. That means if you want to be able to star a page from someone else's course you'll need to get them to add you as an author, then publish the course.
Updating starred pages
The version of the page in your starred list will always be the most-recently published version of that page. So when you add it into a course, it'll be the latest version.