[Courses] Make the course list sortable

When you click on Courses and then All Course, Canvas lists them in some random order. As my number of courses builds up over the semesters, with many courses of the same name, I would like to be able to SORT my list of courses by Name, Semester, Recently used, etc.

So... please let us sort these courses so that we can easily find what we are looking for!

121 Comments
vanzandt
Community Champion

I agree! Most modern web applications these days allow Sorting by clicking on column headings in tables.

nmogul
Community Explorer

I agree, I would love this option.

I frequently need to look up past courses and this would make it so much easier. I would settle for them being listed in chronological order, either by year or by class.

cholling
Community Champion

There have been several suggestions for making course lists more powerful. I realized the morning, that one thing would make my course list more useful for me is when I click Courses, I get a list of the courses that are already on course cards on my dashboard and All Courses. I would find it helpful for the list to be "recently visited" courses.

This would allow my dashboard to contain the courses I'm actively working on. The course list to show courses that I've recently visited and need to easily return to, and keep the complete list available for me to enter "third tier" courses that I need or have been involved in but not actively working on.

As the instructional designer for our school as well as a Canvas admin, I have access in various places to many courses, and this would allow me to keep a somewhat prioritized access readily available.

adrienne_and_sm
Community Novice

Cynthia, More Powerful & More EFFICIENT!

Right on.

They are in a feeble numerical order. Why y'all selected that is incomprehensible. 

We should be able to sort them chronologically, at least.

We should be able to sort them in every, pardon me, either category.

Heck, WORD files are more efficient at that... & give far more options.

Even topic, department & theme would help.

I do enjoy going back & even seeing conversations & discussions from earlier classes.

Just wish it wasn't so hard a hunt.

deperkins
Community Novice

Just finished a chat with Canvas Help.  Courses are sorted alphabetically by the name created by your institution.  I suspect that most users do not have the freedom to change that name.  At minimum, giving individual users the option to sort by nickname would provide the ability to create a customized sorting solution.

rpeters3
Community Participant

Just sorting by heading would be great. Instructors don't have control over the institution naming convention and we have plenty of instructors who teach 3 or more courses per term. Makes the list unwieldy when a professor is attempting to find a course for letters of rec or grading issues or old content when the list is 50 courses long.

nmogul
Community Explorer

So glad to see this issue trending. 

natalie_norton1
Community Champion

Yes! This would be particularly useful for the 'past enrolments' section of courses! Each year our courses end but are still accessible in 'past enrolments'. However some staff now have 4/5 years worth and it is getting quite unmanageable.... Would be great if they could filter/sort  by term, alphabetical order etc

dla0009
Community Member

Canvas PLEASE add this feature soon. It is not so bad for teachers with just a few courses a semester, but I have multiple lab sections with up to 12 courses a semester. Problem gets worse every semester. HELP

DeletedUser
Not applicable

I wouldn't mind being able to sort by course code. Sometimes, I may not remember the exact name of a course, but if I know that it's an ENGL in the 2000s, I could easily find it.