Hi Jenny,
Thank you for expressing your appreciation!
To correct what I said earlier, it does look like it is possible for students to see older versions of the course, as long as they had made some progress in that older version. So if a student has completed CSD 2018-19 Unit 1, then they can see it by going to https://studio.code.org/s/csd1-2018/, or by going to https://studio.code.org/courses/csd-2018/ and clicking on Unit 1. These are what I meant by “direct URL”. These will work for students even after you assign them to CSD 19-20, provided they have progress in the course or unit you are sending them to.
If the projects are the main thing that you want the students to be able to bring with them, then one idea is for students to “Remix” those projects, and then “Rename” them to give them a good name. Then, if they ever click “Projects” in the top menu bar (or sometimes in the top-right menu), they will be able to see their past work. Additionally, any project a student Remixes like this, you will be able to see in the “Projects” tab within teacher dashboard when you are looking at their section.
The “share” option you asked about will give you the link to a single project. that will work too, but it might be a bit cumbersome for each student to manage many of these links.
I hope you can find a way to make things work without the students having to create new accounts, and if you can’t, we’d love to understand what changes we’d need to make in order to avoid that in this situation. Please keep us in the loop with what you decide.
Cheers,
Dave