Fixing Broken Links Fast: USU's Experience with Atomic Search Find & Replace

Client: Utah State University

Utah State University (USU) has long prioritized delivering high-quality, accessible learning experiences through Canvas. The university's Center for Instructional Design and Innovation (CIDI) plays a central role in maintaining that quality, helping faculty build consistent, well-structured courses across its statewide campuses.

When students expressed the need for better ways to find information within their courses, Utah State University (USU) looked for a tool to enhance the experience for both learners and instructors. Their search led them to Atomic Search by Atomic Jolt. Following a successful pilot program and having already been a customer of Atomic Assessments, USU fully adopted Atomic Search. One feature that stood out was the Find & Replace tool, which significantly improved the way USU managed large-scale course updates.

Meet Elisa Taylor

Elisa Taylor is the Assistant Director of CIDI at USU. With an Ed.S. in Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences, she leads instructional design across five campuses, supporting departments from general education to discipline-specific programs.

Her team helps scale and sustain high-quality online and virtual learning experiences, utilizing tools such as Atomic Assessments, Canvas, and Respondus. When it came to solving content consistency challenges at scale, Taylor's team was at the forefront.

The Challenge: Legacy Content and Inaccessible Resources

As a Canvas customer for over 12 years, USU faced an increasingly complex web of legacy content. Courses had been copied, reused, and revised over time, resulting in outdated information, inconsistent messaging, and inaccessible resources, including broken links.

The turning point came when a widely used online student support URL changed. That one small naming convention update broke the link in over 13,000 instances across Canvas courses, affecting thousands of students.

"This online resource is an invaluable tool for our online students,” said Taylor. "Suddenly, it was inaccessible to them.”

Manually finding and updating the links would have taken weeks and involved an extensive risk of human error. USU needed a faster and more scalable way to keep its content up-to-date.

The Solution: Atomic Search's Find & Replace

To address the challenge, USU leveraged Atomic Search's Find & Replace feature.

Find & Replace allows administrators and designers to search for content patterns across the LMS and make bulk updates, even within HTML. It runs in the background, so teams can focus on other tasks while updates are processed. In the case of the 13,000 broken links, the instructional design team launched a single Find & Replace query. Within two days and with minimal oversight, every instance was updated.

"The brilliance of Find & Replace is that it runs in the background,” said Taylor. "We didn't have to babysit it. It just did the work.”

The team also used Find & Replace to standardize references to library materials and apply consistent messaging when reusing course templates. Even when instructors used different templates or pulled in older versions of a course, the tool could locate and correct the needed elements.

Results and Impact

The tool has saved significant time and reduced the cognitive load on technical and instructional staff. Key benefits include:

• Massive time savings: What once required manual spreadsheet work can now be accomplished with just a few clicks.
• Improved accuracy: Fewer errors and inconsistencies in student-facing content.
• Scalable course maintenance: From individual updates to institution-wide overhauls, Find & Replace supports updates at any scale.

"This was huge for us. It put our mind at ease that if an instructor copies a course, maybe one they haven't taught in a few years, they can pull in an older version, and we know that link will be good and up to date, " said Taylor. "Students need accurate information, and we don't want faculty to waste time troubleshooting when it's something our team can easily fix for them."

Unexpected Bonus: Better Course Audits

Another powerful benefit of the adoption was the ability to download the results of Find & Replace queries. This feature gave the team a valuable window into their course history as Taylor and the team were able to:

• See exactly which courses were impacted
• Review content by course ID and date
• Evaluate how far back the issue extended
• Keep a historical record of what was changed, when, and where

"When you're dealing with large numbers and tons of content, it's a better way to skim through and see if these big changes make sense,” said Taylor. These insights have improved institutional knowledge and made it easier to plan large-scale content improvements.

Feedback and Future Plans

Both faculty and staff have expressed appreciation for the tool's power and simplicity. USU plans to continue using Find & Replace for upcoming projects, including updating widespread netiquette references. Among the anticipated highlights:

• Using Find & Replace to help convert old course templates and design tools
• Update outdated netiquette guidelines across courses
• Leveraging the tool's ability to search within HTML, which is especially powerful for instructional designers
• Taking advantage of Atomic Search's word cloud feature to gain insight into course content and keyword trends
• Continuing to use result downloads for smarter auditing and deeper LMS insights

Final Thoughts

Atomic Search, and particularly the Find & Replace tool, has become an essential part of USU's instructional design toolkit. As the institution continues to evolve and scale its online offerings, tools like these ensure course content stays accurate, accessible, and up to date across hundreds of learning environments.

New to Atomic Search? Sign up for a demo to see it in action.