Getting material from a previous course into the course you are about to teach can be accomplished via a course copy, or by exporting your old course and importing it into your new course. Instructions are available in these articles:

• Course Copy - Copying Course Materials into an Existing Course (Instructor)
• Courses - Exporting an Existing Course and Importing into a New Course (Instructor)
  
• Courses - Copy Item

Here are a few things to note about the export/import processes:

1. Exports and imports of courses creating export packages of over 250MB will not process. If you have an over-limit course, please contact nuonlineid@neu.edu for information on how best to move your materials.
2. Unfortunately, when you import discussions threads into a new course, your threads show up as having been posted by "Anonymous." Since this is confusing for students, it's better to copy the threads out of the old site and paste them into new threads in the new course.  It is a little cumbersome, but worth it in the long run.  
3. When you import the content from your previous site, it does not overwrite the template items; instead, it adds the new content to the existing content. So for example, after you've imported your old course into the new shell, you'll have both an empty Week 1 folder, and a populated Week 1 folder.  So, you'll need to delete the template items either before or after you pull in the content from your old course.