Put Everything with a Due Date on the Calendar and Syllabus

[venitk]

Even if you set practice quizzes, for example, with a due date, that date doesn't appear on the calendar. The only place for students to see that dates is if they go through Modules (our institution doesn't allow Quizzes to be shown in the navigation menu, and Practice Quizzes don't show up in Assignments). 

This would be not ideal, but doable, except there are times when dates only show up in the Calendar (Calendar Events). 

All of our courses have practice quizzes (for a code of conduct quiz), and all of our courses have calendar events (to denote when discussion response posts are due, because discussions only allow for one due date).

So we have a situation where there's no one place for a student or an instructor (or instructional designer) to go to see all the dates in a course. 

Edited to add: it is not obvious that the dates for practice quizzes do not show up on the calendar. When you set these dates, there's no warning that they won't appear on the calendar. So an unwitting instructor could be assigning this quiz and think they're giving students a due date that will appear on the Calendar, but it doesn't. 

Much better would be if everything with a due date appeared on the Calendar. The calendar is no longer a place just for dates for graded assignments, since now there are calendar events and page to-do dates. All due dates should appear on the calendar.

[kmeeusen]

Hi Katie:

I found many feature ideas for the Calendar, but not one like yours. I strongly support this idea! While I hate that students tend to live or die by the Calendar, and avoid actually visiting the classroom, I am a realist and understand that this is what they do. Therefore, let's make it a more effective tool for both students and teachers.

I worry that your idea also includes the Syllabus, by which I suspect you mean the Course Summary on the Syllabus page, because all feature idea requests must be a single idea.  However, the Course Summary and Calendar are intimately linked, so I am unsure how this will play out with the Community Managers. I suspect they will ask you to break this into two separate ideas. If that happens, I would suggest noting in both that these are  companion ideas, and link back to both of them.

Kelley

[Stef_retired]

Thanks for sharing this idea,  @venitk . In the interim, I'd like to share the solution I used when I was teaching, as we too had a required quiz that students had to complete before they could advance in the course, yet the quiz itself wasn't meant to contribute to the course grade. The quiz can be designed as a graded quiz with a due date and placed in an assignment group worth 0% of the grade; it will appear on the calendar and syllabus list, but will act like a practice quiz for grading purposes.

Quizzes.Next wasn't available as a solution when I was teaching, but now that it's here, it's possible to assign an overall point value to the quiz without having to adjust the points for each question. So the practice quiz worth 0 points with a due date could appear in the calendar and syllabus list but would not contribute to the final grade. This approach wouldn't require the use of weighted assignment groups.

[venitk]

Thanks for the suggestions, Stefanie. We've temporarily solved the problem by using calendar events with the due date of the Code of Conduct quiz. But we shouldn't have to do that. A course calendar should show all the dates relevant to the course. 

I added a note to my original post that instructors wouldn't know that a due date on the practice quiz doesn't show up on the calendar unless they bother to check--which, quite frankly, my entire instructional design team didn't realize for months. That's on us, but it really didn't occur to us that something with a due date wouldn't appear on the Calendar. 

[wildermand]

Why have a calendar without due dates? I do not need another personal calendar.

[smithr2]

If it was worth no points that might work as a workaround. But in my case, I have a practice quiz worth points. It is set as a practice quiz so the student can take it as many times as desired (it's part of a lab where they are identifying items as a data gathering step and need to get them all correct before proceeding). There is no way to get the practice quiz (worth 10 points) to show up in the calendar? That means it doesn't show up on the To Do list, either.

[Stef_retired]

 @smithr2 , if you're still using Quizzes (old), and have a practice quiz worth points, it's not technically a practice quiz as it is defined in the quiz tool (see https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-12949-4152724265 ). The practice quiz type does not add points to students' scores.

You could create the quiz as a graded quiz with unlimited attempts and a due date, and that would appear on the calendar and To Do list. Keep in mind that in Quizzes Old, the point values for each question need to be manipulated so that the total value for the quiz is 10 points, which is why Quizzes.Next is preferable for this; the instructor can assign a top-down value to the quiz without having to finagle the point values for each question.

[venitk]

I don't think having it worth 0 points would work because we need it worth something in order to use it as a module requirement; they have to complete the Code of Conduct--and score 100% on it--to unlock course material. A 0 point graded quiz, I don't think, would allow for this. Having a practice quiz worth 10 points allows us to use it at a module requirement that they have to complete to unlock course content. 

Additionally, a practice quiz doesn't display on the Grades tab, so students don't expect those points to figure in the final grade. A 0 point graded quiz would appear on the Grades tab, and we've found that confuses students. 

[Steven_S]

In my experience with practice quizzes (old) the questions still have point values, and the total points earned for the practice quiz can be used as a "score at least" requirement to progress through modules.  As you note, the practice quiz points do not add to the students' score, but the points do exist. 

A graded quiz put into an assignment category worth 0% of the final grade puts it on the calendar.  There is another open idea that would more effectively display this to students by allowing instructors to check a box on a graded quiz, so that it does not count towards the final grade: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/7788-allow-quizzes-to-not-count-towards-final-grade 

If you use a lot of practice quizzes, though the assignments that do not count clutter the grade book.  It would be great to have a way to add practice quizzes to the calendar, but not the gradebook.  (Or a way to set graded quizzes to not count and to not display in the gradebook.)

[brad_kirk]

Canvas is aware Practice Quizzes don't show up in Calendar and that they disappear from "Assignments" when you set then to Practice (but stay visible in "Quizzes").  That's is not good!  Calendar is why we bought Canvas.  Note that Practice Quizzes  DO show up in students' "To Do" list, which is all our high school kids ever look at.  And the zero point "Graded Quiz" work around works, although it clutters up "Grades".

I was hoping to use undated Practice Quizzes as linked quizzes in Google Slide decks (just copy/paste the URL ) as an incentive for students to actually go through the Slides.  You can still see if they did the quizzes in "Quizzes"/statistics, but not in Speedgrader. But it sounds like Canvas is dropping "Quizzes" in 2/21, so it is a risky move to invest time in this.

Note that Respondus Lockdown Browser ONLY works for quizzes made in  "Quizzes", not Quizzes.Next...so hard to know what to do

[Steven_S]

 @brad_kirk  I believe canvas is working on fixing quizzes.next to work with lockdown and proctorio.  I don't think they are considering any updates to old quizzes at all, however ideas like this one are considered as potential updates for quizzes.next...

For now I stick to old quizzes so that lockdown works, use practice quizzes for actual practice that I do not need to track, and quizzes in a 0% assignment group for ungraded quizzes I need to track.  I also hide the assignment and quiz tabs and locate all student activities in modules, so that students do not need to hunt for what to do next.  With everything in modules, I can use module rules to require that practice quizzes are completed or even a certain minimum score earned, which means I can be certain that students have finished those ungraded activities before reaching the graded activities.

I'm sure all of those functions will exist in quizzes.next eventually, and I hope this idea will be considered as well.  A lack of consistency in what shows up on the calendar, to-do list, and syllabus only confuses students.  All activities with an assigned due date and pages with an assigned to-do date should show in every list of course activities.  When those activities have been placed in modules, everything with the same due time should be ordered according to the order setup in modules.

[jacob5]

HIGHLY useful, particularly during remote learning

[d_anderson2]

I completely agree that this feature is needed.  I created a practice quiz for students to work through a question bank as they studied, then after 2 weeks gave the graded quiz.  It was only after the "due date" that students told me they never saw the practice quiz in the calendar.  What?  Why have a due date feature for a practice quiz if it isn't visible to the students or communicated clearly to instructors that it will not show up.

[avclark]

I agree that practice quizzes with due dates should show up on the calendar!  I use "ungrading," which means that the points for small items like this don't technically figure into the final grade (though they do figure into the reflections that do)--but I want them to show up on the calendar.  Actually, I am one of those who doesn't understand why *anything* with a due date doesn't show up on the calendar, and I'm mystified at the fact that so many are advocating for this, over a period of years, while Canvas does nothing.  Please fix this!

[ProductPanda]

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