Course continuity

Back up your Canvas course

Turn a Canvas course export into offline copies you and your students can open if Canvas goes down. You get an instructor copy, a student web copy, and a student EPUB for phones.

Your course never leaves this computer
Three ready-to-share files
Takes about a minute

Export from Canvas

Open your course in Canvas and select Settings.
Select Export Course Content on the right.
Choose Course, then Create Export.
When it finishes, download the .imscc file.

Export near the start of the term and again after big changes. Canvas guide: How do I export a Canvas course? (opens in a new tab)

Convert it here

Drag your .imscc file here

Up to 2 GB. The file is read here and never uploaded.

Student copies

Include unpublished modules and items Keeps weeks you have not released yet, so one export covers an outage at any point in the term. Items labeled "Do Not Publish" and all quiz questions are always left out.

Choose a Canvas export to begin.

What you get

For you only

Instructor web copy

A complete website of your course. Unzip it and open index.html.

Every module, page, assignment, and discussion
Quiz questions with correct answers, and question banks
Rubrics, all course files, and unpublished content
A report of what the student copies leave out

For students on a computer

Student web copy

The same course website with the instructor material removed.

Modules, pages, assignment and discussion directions
Files and images linked from that content
Quiz titles and directions, no questions or answers
Nothing labeled "Do Not Publish"

For students on a phone

Student EPUB

A reading copy for Apple Books, Google Play Books, or any EPUB app.

Same content as the student web copy
Text resizes to fit any screen
Images included; PDFs and other files stay in the web copy

Private by design

This page reads your export inside your web browser. Nothing is uploaded to cocai.io, to the college, or to any AI service. The page has a built-in security rule that blocks it from connecting to the internet at all, so course content cannot leave your computer even by mistake. Course exports do not contain student grades, submissions, or rosters.

Questions

What does not carry over?

Anything that only works inside Canvas: submitting work, grades, discussion replies, New Quizzes questions, publisher tools and other LTI apps, and Canvas Studio videos. YouTube videos and other web links still work when the student is online. The report in the instructor copy lists each of these by page.

How are student copies kept safe?

Student copies leave out quiz questions, answers, question banks, and anything whose title includes "Do Not Publish". They only include files that are linked from content students can see, so answer keys sitting in Canvas Files stay out. Automatic filtering cannot catch everything, so look through the student copy before you share it.

How do students open the files?

For the web copy, students unzip the file and open index.html in any browser. For the EPUB, they open it in Apple Books, Google Play Books, or another EPUB reader. Windows computers need an EPUB app, so those students can use the web copy instead.

How should I share the student copies?

Use a channel students can reach when Canvas is down, such as your college email. Keep the files somewhere you can find them quickly, and make a fresh export after major course changes.

My export is very large. What can I do?

Large videos make exports big. In Canvas, choose Export Course Content, select Course, then Select specific content, and leave out large video files. Students can still reach those videos online.