What is TidyUP?
TidyUP is a content cleanup tool for Canvas courses that is a part of the Cidi Labs tools. It provides a quick way to view all of the content in your course and clean out anything that is no longer needed. Now you can identify and delete extra or unused files, folders, pages, or assignments to make your course easier to manage and ready to copy so it is more usable for you in the future!
Resources: TidyUP user guide
Here are a few basics about using TidyUP at Mt. SAC:
Where do I find TidyUP?
TidyUP is available to add to your course into your course navigation. Go to Settings and then go to the Navigation tab (top center on Settings page). Find TidyUP in the list of hidden tools and click on the three dots to enable or just drag it to the top, visible items to enable it. Don’t forget to click “Save” before navigating away from the page to keep your changes.
What can I “tidy up” with this tool?
The TidyUP tool scans your course to see the files (which includes images), folders, and Canvas pages in your account. It shows the dates they were added or modified, whether they are in use (and where), if they contain content (for Canvas pages), and if they are published or not.
The one exception (which is noted within the tool): it will not tell you if files/images are used in a question bank. If you have photos in a question bank and the questions are not added to a quiz, the best approach is to generate an unpublished quiz with all questions from a question bank. This will then tag those photos as being in a location in your course to help you retain them.
Why (or when) would I use TidyUP?
TidyUP is great if you want to declutter your course files before your course closes for the term. As you may remember, two weeks after courses close, they roll over into a past course “read-only” format. You can always re-use course materials by importing past courses into new, active course shells. This means that you can also just copy the entire course over and use TidyUP on the new course shell to remove old versions of files or files and Canvas pages you did not use.
Here are a few other uses that Cidi Labs suggests for TidyUP:
- Accidentally import content into a course twice? Now you have two versions of every page! With Canvas only, this can be very difficult to undo, but now TidyUP can make this work easy! Do a quick search for “-1” to find all of the extra copies and delete them all with the click of a button.
- Use TidyUP as a final course check before the semester begins. Run a scan to make sure all of your relevant content is listed in modules, has content, and is ready for students from day one.
- You accidentally created multiple versions of an assignment and now you can’t remember which one is the right one. Now in TidyUP you can quickly check to see which version is actually linked to from other content and delete the others!
TidyUP Options & Recommendations
In TidyUP tool you can filter for all or unused file and filter by file type to target the files you want to review. Deletion using the trash can will double check that your intention is to remove the file to ensure fewer errors or random clicks causing actions that weren’t intended.
There is an option to download all files (as a zipped folder) and this is recommended before you begin to clean your files to ensure you have a backup copy in case you remove something by accident or decide later that you wish to reinstate a file.
Other Questions/Need Help?
Cidi Labs offers support for this tool, along with support for their DesignPLUS tool, which is also available at Mt. SAC (Learn more about Design PLUS in the Canvas Faculty Center). You can use their support site or contact them for assistance.
Give TidyUP a try and see how it can help you keep your courses Marie Kondo tidy!
We’d love to hear about your experiences (or your questions) about TidyUP after you give it a test run. Let us know how you used this tool and what you learned! Is there another tool or topic you’d like to learn about? Let us know in the comments below so we can add it in a future post!