Sharing & Reusing Activities

The simplest reuse needs no copying at all. Because assignment is separate from authoring, the same activity can be assigned to as many sections as you like — each with its own dates — while remaining a single activity you edit in one place.

• Edit once, and every future session across every section picks up the change — except evaluation settings, which stay as assigned in sections where students have already practiced
• Each section keeps independent dates, completion, and submissions
• Completed conversations are never altered by later edits

Lemon says: Only make a copy when the sections genuinely need different content. Otherwise one activity is far less to maintain.

When two sections need materially different versions — a different level, a different region, a different complication — make a copy. A copy is fully independent from the moment it's created.

• Copies arrive as drafts so you can adapt before assigning
• Edits to a copy never affect the original, and vice versa
• A copy's title starts with 'Copy of', so rename it to tell the two apart

Lemon says: A good use for copies: the same scenario at Novice Mid and Intermediate Low, so a mixed class can pick their level.

By the end of a second term, an unsorted activity list becomes hard to work with. Folders group activities so you can find things quickly on the Activities page.

• By unit or chapter — matches how you plan
• By level — useful when you teach several courses
• By term — keeps last year's material out of the way without deleting it

Lemon says: Set folders up before you need them. Sorting sixty activities retroactively is nobody's favourite afternoon.

The Library is the shared pool other educators browse. Sharing an activity there makes it available for others to copy and adapt, and copying from it is the fastest way to get a well-built activity you didn't have to write.

• An activity must be finished before it can be shared
• You choose whether to share with educators, the wider community, or both
• Your name and institution are shown as attribution; anonymous sharing is only offered for the Community Library, right after you finish an activity
• Others get an independent copy — your original is never modified

Lemon says: Share the ones that worked. An activity that reliably fills eight minutes is genuinely valuable to someone teaching the same unit.

A finished activity can also get a public link. Anyone with the link can see a preview of the activity — its title, description, level, and length — without needing to be in your class. Once created, the same menu offers to copy the link again.

• Useful for a department demo or a conference talk
• Useful for prospective students seeing the format before enrolling
• Useful for showing a colleague what you built without adding them to a class

Lemon says: This is the link to paste in an email when someone asks 'so what does it actually look like?'