How to Import & Sync Courses, Sections & Learning Activities Within the Same or Different Schools

Importing and Syncing courses, sections, and learning activities within a school or across Multiple LearnWorlds schools, allows seamless transitions between schools within the same Organization or the same school, saving time and effort. It also promotes consistency but also improves collaboration and content management within the educational environment.

In this article, we will discover how to:

• Import courses across multiple schools within an Organization.
• Import sections and learning activities between multiple schools within the Organization or within the same school.
• Sync courses, sections, and learning activities across multiple schools within the organization and within the same school.
• Unsync content from the synchronized peer group.

Import Content

You can import courses between schools within the same organization, syncing content and layouts. Moreover, you can import sections and learning activities within both the same school and multiple schools under the same organization.

Import Courses

To import/clone courses from one school to another, log in to the destination school. From your admin dashboard:

1. Navigate to Courses → Course Manager → Import course.

2. Select the originating school and the specific courses you wish to import. You can select multiple courses with the “Custom list…” option.

3. Click on Import.

Import Sections

To import/clone a section from one school to another or within the same school, log in to the destination school. From your admin dashboard:

1. Navigate to Courses → Course manager select the course you wish to import sections, and navigate to the Course Outline tab. Click on to Import section.

2. Select the sections and learning activities you want to import into the current course. You can select multiple activities from different courses at once and define if the selected sections will keep in sync with the source ones.

3. Click on Import.

Import Learning Activities

To import/clone learning activities from one school to another or within the same school, log in to the destination school.

From your admin dashboard:

1. Navigate to Courses → Course manager, select the course you wish to import the learning activities, and navigate to the Course Outline tab. Click on Import activity.

2. Select the learning activities you want to import to the current course. You can select multiple activities from different courses at once and define if the selected activities will keep in sync with the source ones.

3. Click on Import.

When you import courses/sections/learning activities across schools, any assessment variables added will not work in the cloned course. You will need to add the variables again.

Sync Content

When you synchronize a course, section, activity, or page between schools within the same Organization or within the same school, any changes made are reflected across all synchronized peers.

Sync Course (Content and Layout page)

To sync the content and/or the layout page of a course from one school to another, log in to the destination school. From your admin dashboard:

1. Navigate to Courses → Course Manager → Import Courses.

2. Choose whether to synchronize only the course content, the course layout page, or both. For each selection, a pop-up message will provide details on the information to be synchronized and will seek your consent. 

3. Click on Import to complete the synchronization process.

To sync a course within the same school, initiate the process by cloning the course. To clone and sync the course within the same school, log in to the destination school. From your admin dashboard:

1. Navigate to Courses → Course Manager → hover over the three dots in the course you want to sync and click on Clone Course. For guidance on cloning a course, refer to this article: How to Duplicate/Clone a Course.

2. Choose whether to synchronize only the course content, the course layout page, or both. For each selection, a pop-up message will provide details on the information to be synchronized and will seek your consent. 

3. Click on Clone course to complete the synchronization process.

Note: If you choose to clone a course that includes a Zoom learning activity and then sync the two courses, the Zoom session will be the same one in both courses. To avoid this, you can unsync only this specific activity.

Sync Sections and Learning Activities

When synchronizing a course across multiple schools or within the same school, the synchronization primarily involves the content within the Contents tab, including sections and learning activities. However, there may be instances where you specifically want to import and sync an activity or a section either from another school or the same school. 

In such cases, you have the option to import and synchronize the corresponding activities or sections from either another school or the same school. To import and sync an activity, you need to log in to the destination school. From your admin dashboard:

1. Navigate to Courses → Course Manager and choose your course.

2. Under the Course outline tab, click on Import activity → select the school → the course you wish, and select which activity or activities you wish to add.

3. Define if the selected activities will keep in sync with the source ones.

To import and sync a section, you need to log in to the destination school. From your admin dashboard:

1. Navigate to Courses → Course manager and choose your course.

2. Under the Course outline tab, click on Import section, select the school and choose the sections and the activities you want to import to the current course.

3. Define if the selected section will keep in sync with the source ones.

-To avoid issues, we highly recommend not working on the import and sync features in multiple open tabs in your browser.

-Users and their progress are not transferred during the cloning or syncing process. If you need to transfer users and their progress, you must export them from the initial school, import them into the new school-course, and manually update their progress.

-Syncing is available between a live school and a sandbox school, provided they belong to the same organization.

Levels of Synchronization

At the page level, we synchronize both the page content and custom code. On the course level, syncing a course involves all course content, excluding settings within Access, Pricing, Settings, Course Player, Video Library, and Dashboard. For a detailed breakdown of synchronized areas, refer to the comprehensive table below, specifying each section's synchronization details.

Unsync Contents

Let's delve into the content un-syncing process.

Unsync Course

Should you reconsider syncing a course with others, the unsynchronization process can be initiated either from the Courses Manager or within the course environment. 

1. Navigate to the Course Manager, hover over the course, and under the Sync info click on Unsync course. Choose if you want to Unsync all contents (Unsync all content, including sections and activities of this course. Peer courses will remain synced) or Unsync the course level only (Sections and learning activities within the course will remain synced. Peer courses will remain synced) and click on Unsync.

2. Navigate to the Course → Course outline and click on Sync info. Choose if you want to Unsync all contents (Unsync all content, including sections and activities of this course. Peer courses will remain synced) or Unsync the course level only (Sections and learning activities within the course will remain synced. Peer courses will remain synced) and click on Unsync. 

When a course is unsynced, it is detached from the synchronized peer group (courses synced to that specific course). Consequently, if there are 10 courses synched, and you choose to un-sync one, the remaining 9 courses will continue to stay synchronized.

However, if you delete a course whose content is synced with other courses, the synced activities will become unsynced, but they will not be removed from the other courses.

Unsync Sections and Learning Activities

In order to un-sync a Course section, navigate to your course, hover over the section, and click on Sync info. Choose if you wish to Unsync section and activities (Unsync the section and all the activities contained. The peer sections will remain synced. The course will also be unsynced) or Unsync section only (Unsync the section only. The activities contained will remain synced. The peer sections will also remain synced. The course will also be unsynced).

In order to un-sync a Course learning activity, navigate to your course, hover over the activity, click on Sync info, and Unsync activity.  

-The un-sync action is irreversible.

-If you delete an activity that is synced in other courses, all the synced activities are deleted.

Sync information table

You can see all of the information on the course/section/learning activity sync by navigating to the synced course you are interested in and clicking on Sync info (for the section and learning activity, hover over the item and click on Sync info → Sync overview). 

The sync info table allows you to identify the synchronization peers for each page/course/section and learning activity, enabling a clear understanding of the impact each removal will have.

Live Sessions synchronization

For any Zoom, Webex, and Calendly learning activities: 

• Cross-school synced Zoom, Webex, Calendly activities are not supported, however, syncing across the same school is supported.
• Recurring meetings and synchronization are inherently incompatible. In essence, attempting to convert a synchronized meeting into a recurring one is not feasible.
• In the admin calendar, you will only see the event once, however, in the upcoming previous list, you can see all synced peers (all synced activities).

Import/Sync permissions

• Organization owners/Super admins can import synced resources to/from the schools they own/manage and edit them at any time while having their changes propagate across all their synced peer pages, regardless of whether they have access to all the peer pages.
• School admins can import synced resources only from/to inside the school. Provided the resource remains synced only inside their school boundaries, they can also edit it and have its changes propagate to its peer pages.
• As soon as a resource is cloned across multiple schools, it can only be edited by a super-admin or the organizational owner, as well as the users that have editing permissions on the original resource that got cloned.

Features per plan

Across different schools course syncing is available for up to five schools within an organization, provided that one of the schools within the organization has purchased the corresponding add-on (Pro trainer plan or higher). 

Content Sync vs. School Clone—What you need to know

1. Syncing pages, courses, and learning activities:

• How many schools can I sync? Up to five schools total (the source school and four others) in the same organization.
• What do I need? At least one of those schools must have the Course Sync add-on (available on Pro Trainer, Learning Center, and High Volume plans).
• Need to reach more schools? If you want to sync to six or more schools, just drop us a line at support@learnworlds.com—we’ll get you sorted in no time.

2. Cloning an entire school:

• Plan requirement: Both the original and newly cloned schools must be on the Learning Center plan.
• Important: The Course Sync add-on only moves courses and learning activities. It does not duplicate a whole school.
• Trying to clone on a lower plan? You’ll need to upgrade first.

For a step-by-step guide to school cloning, check out this article.