How to create derivative courses from a base course with Savvas content

Savvas built the integration with Buzz so that you can build a course once and share it with other teachers in your district. 

In this tutorial we show you how to use a Base course with Savvas content that then can copied to Derivative courses. Derivative courses are linked copies of the Base course that inherit its content and settings, but have their own student enrollments.

Before you begin this tutorial follow the Agilix Buzz tutorial on how to create Base courses and copy to Derivative courses.

Create a Base course

Create a course including Savvas assignments (see tutorial Step 1: Add Savvas assignments if you need help on how to add Savvas content to your course).

Do not add student enrollments. Students are added to the Derived courses only. 

Add any other content authors you want to have access to your course.

Create one or more Derivative courses

Derivative courses are linked copies of the Base course that inherit its content (including Savvas assignments) and settings, but have their own student enrollments.


To create a Derivative course simply create a new course. In the Create course screen select Copy from your domain and select the course name or ID of the Base course you created above and click Next.

Choose Updates (derivative-child copy).

Name the Derived course.

For the Derived course add the teacher and student enrollments.

Teacher access their Derived course

The teacher of the Derived course will now see the course under their Courses tab. 

Note: In this example the teacher has access to both the Base course and the Derived course.

The teacher will need to open any Savvas assignment to activate the class with Savvas Realize. Select any Savvas assignment.

The teacher will then be asked by Savvas Realize to choose the school that the course belongs to.

Now that you can see Savvas assignment which now indicates your class is setup in Savvas Realize.

You can view your class in Savvas Realize by simply clicking on the Launch Savvas Realize button.

You can see your class was created in Savvas Realize.

Remember that Savvas does not add students until the student access their first assigment in the class. Savvas Realize also does not add assignments until the first student access the assignment.

Students complete their assignments in Buzz

Students can see their Derived courses in Buzz just like any other course.

They can see their assignments that are inherited from the Base course, just like a regular course.

Just like a regular course, students can open and complete their Savvas assignments right in their Buzz course.