Use Broadcast to distribute files to students in your Canvas course

On this page:

Overview
Add the Broadcast tool to your course
Use Microsoft OneDrive at IU to distribute files to students in your course

Overview

The Broadcast tool in Canvas gives you the ability to automatically distribute copies of files, folders, or large data sets to each student in your course.

You have two options for distribution. You can copy a folder from your Microsoft OneDrive at IU account to the Microsoft OneDrive at IU accounts of all of your students; the folder you broadcast will appear in each student's OneDrive account inside a new top-level folder called "My Courses". Or, for large data sets and extremely large files (such as GIS or statistical applications) that perform best when hosted on a file server, you can copy a ZIP archive to private folders on an IU file server for each of your students.

Add the Broadcast tool to your course

Broadcast is hidden by default.

To add a hidden tool to your course navigation menu, see How do I manage Course Navigation links?

Use Microsoft OneDrive at IU to distribute files to students in your course

Broadcast lets you place a copy of a folder from your OneDrive account into the OneDrive accounts of all students on your course roster. The folder you broadcast will appear in each student's OneDrive account inside a new top-level folder called My Courses.

Note:

Broadcast folders are not collaborative folders; each student gets an individual copy of the broadcast folder and its contents. Students have read/write permissions for their own copies of the broadcast folder, but cannot see the copies belonging to others in the course.

To distribute a folder in your OneDrive account to the students on your course roster:

Access your course in Canvas, and then choose Broadcast on the left.
Choose Select from OneDrive to open the file picker; log in as necessary.
Choose the radio button for the folder you want to broadcast, and then choose Select.
Enter a new name for the folder or keep the existing name (this is the folder name your students will see).
Choose Start Broadcasting.

Your students will receive a link to the broadcast folder in email; you will receive email confirming the folder was broadcast successfully.

Notes:

To send copies of a previously broadcast folder to new students who have been added to your course roster, run Broadcast again on the same folder (leave Overwrite existing folder unchecked).
If you accidentally broadcast the wrong folder, use Broadcast to select the appropriate folder, give it the same name as the previously broadcast folder, and then select Overwrite existing folder (if present). Choosing Start Broadcasting will overwrite every file in every copy of the previously broadcast folder.
To add new or updated files to a previously broadcast folder, first update the contents of the source folder in your OneDrive account, and then, in Broadcast, either:
- Use the same broadcast folder name, but select Overwrite existing folder (if present) before choosing Start Broadcasting. This method will overwrite all files in the previously broadcast folder.
- Append something to the broadcast folder name (for example, Updated or Part 2) to indicate that the content of the broadcast folder has been updated, leave Overwrite existing folder (if present) unchecked, and then choose Start Broadcasting.