We recently released a new assignment duplicator for Populi courses. As the feature name suggests, it lets you create one or more duplicates of any existing assignment.

Say you assign weekly readings throughout a 20-week course, each one a grade-only assignment worth 10 points. You formerly had to create 20 identical assignments, muttering under your breath the entire time about repetitive motion injuries and wear-and-tear on your mouse. Well, we hate carpal tunnels and love to save you time, so we built the duplicator. Now you need only add one new assignment and then use the new feature to create 19 more copies.

To continue to save you time, we gave you a handy variable you can insert anywhere in the assignment name: if you enter, say, "Week {number:start=2} Reading", your new assignments will spill into your assignment list as Week 2 Reading, Week 3 Reading, and so on. Then you click Edit groups and assignments, enter the correct due dates, and then kick up your feet to read a nice academic paper or two.

That's just one scenario; there are, of course, many other ways the duplicator could come in handy! You can get all the details about the new feature in the Populi Knowledge Base or have a look at the video we made: