Enhanced 'message students who' for multiple assignments

[mlewis23]

I'd like to be able to use the 'message students who' function in the gradebook for more than a single assignment.  It would be useful to be able to go to the column in the gradebook for an assignment group and use the 'message students who'.  Same applies for the total grade column so teachers could after the first two weeks send out a message to all students that are under performing early enough for them to change there behavior.

So for example, I could 'message students who' are getting xx% in the assignment group of 'Homework' or 'Participation'.  I could also use it with the total grade for the course reminding all students with xx% they can find help in the tutor lab.

By making the 'Message Students Who..." more robust, Canvas would bringing in some basic early alert/retention strategies as well as make some of the third party applications even better.

We have three very similar ideas, all of which are open for voting, associated with the Message Students Who... feature, and we're grouping them here to keep Canvas Studio tidy. These are the other two:

https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/3427-message-students-who 

https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1240-message-students-who-for-grade-totals

[biray]

Welcome back,  @mlewis23 ​. Thank you for submission (or shall I say, re-submission -- ).

Thank you for your Feature Idea submission.  We wanted to call your attention to Message Students Who... for Grade Totals which you submitted in a different voting period.  It may still contain valuable discussion and insight as this discussion moves through the voting process.

We also encourage you to check out this article that can help you maximize the exposure and support of your Feature Idea: How do I write a good feature idea submission

This idea will be open for voting again in the next voting cycle. I really hope you can leverage the community and gather some momentum to support this idea.

Good luck!

[mlewis23]

Here is the link to the previous discussion about this idea:

https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1240#comment-18738

[biray]

This idea is now open for vote.

[ccalderon]

This would be very helpful for so many reasons!

[instructionalte]

We will be passing this along to our  many faculty members who have asked for this functionality! Thanks  @mlewis23 ​

[mlewis23]

Great! I've had several faculty members ask about how to use the 'Message students who..' feature from the gradebook, and they usually ask if it can be global to all the assignments or to an assignment group. 

[bschneider]

Nice post Matt! Hope this get more than the votes needed, I believe it would be very beneficial.

[mlewis23]

Yes I agree  @bschneider . Anything that can assist teachers with early alerts is going to be beneficial.

[instructionalte]

Just tweeted this out, so we can try and gain some traction! Vote early and vote often. 🙂

[macaulayl]

Having more options to choose under the "message students who..." would be awesome.  A request that came into me today was to have the option of "message students who submitted the assignment late" so that the instructor can follow up with them about why a grade was changed easily (points deducted for lateness) without having to make an individual comment on each late student's grade.

[kaw]

This feature would be important to see students who consistently are not giving a particular group of assignments.  I have a few students consistently not submitting online HWs (20% of grade).

[biray]

Thank You for taking the time and energy to submit and discuss your idea. Your feedback helps our product teams prioritize feature development so we can build a product you will love. Unfortunately, this idea has been archived because it did not meet the 100-vote threshold within the 3-month voting period. Learn more at: How does the voting process work for feature ideas?

Can archived ideas still become a feature?  Potentially. Archived ideas can be resubmitted by Community members. As people’s needs change, previously submitted ideas may gain additional traction. All feature ideas are evaluated as a whole and may influence product direction.

Panda-Cat: A mythical creature that we dreamed up to catch your attention, make you laugh, and encourage you to stay invested in Feature Ideas process of making Canvas better!

[kaw]

I am disappointed that this feature request is being archived.  Is it always majority rules or is there no way Instructure sees intrinsic value in a simple but effective tool for student success.

[kona]

 @kaw ​, I can't speak for this specific feature idea, but no it's definitely not majority rules for which feature ideas get implemented. Some ideas that get a huge number of votes (over 300) get archived and then some ideas with few votes get implemented. A lot has to do with how ideas fit into the Canvas road map and how easy/difficult it would be to develop it. Some ideas that seem easy to implement are actually really difficult on the back-end. Canvas takes all of these things into consideration when deciding which feature ideas get implemented or not.  Here's a great guide that might better explain this - What is the feature development process for Canvas?

[kaw]

Thank you for the clarification.  Many a times, a difficult idea to implement is a way to progress.

[kona]

I totally agree! Right now Canvas is completely redesigning quizzes - Modern Quizzing Engine. This is a huge undertaking, but as you mentioned above, it's the only way to progress and move forward! You also might be interested in taking a look at the - Canvas Studio. It shows what's on the road map (including two huge things, Quizzing and Speedgrader redesign!!), what's in development, and what's already been completed. It's pretty interesting to see and helps provide a bigger picture of what's going on.

[yueda]

I am a year late to this conversation, but added my vote to make it clear that this is still a feature that would be helpful for helping students track their own progress.

Many other platforms (for example, TerraDotta) have a built-in "dashboard" with remaining to-do items, and that list can be emailed to students on a weekly or monthly basis to help them keep track of what they still need to do, say, before their application is complete. It seems like the same concept. 

[sheldonj1]

This is a fine idea but.....

It would require some extra kind of "drop down menu" and it would require that the, when invoked, the "database search function" would have to go through - user clicks main drop down menu - user clicks function "a" -

Then "function a"  says to him or herself... ( think the admins in the tall hats in Tron) "I will now go out into the database while "pulling a string to find the "end of search string" other user ( the student) and come back to here, grab another string and repeat to come back here with another "end of search string (student) ) , grab another string and repeat by going out and coming back (this is how a "relational" database works as opposed to a "flat file" database works ) .

Ok so I ( the old guy in the tall hat) now have all the strings to the other end of string users, what does my user want? 

Oh yeah, run down the staircase looking at the different messages ( text $ )  from my user ( which had to be figured out ahead of time by the programmers and approved by the various stakeholders) grab the message and run back to the top of the stairs,

Or go over to the anteroom and grab the text $ ( message ) that my user threw down the message chute and come back here.

Then....send his text $ to the end of string user  ( student ) so run down each string with the message $ to each of the end of string users and come back, then, REDO all of this to verify that it has, indeed, been done or.

GOSUB to a message to the main administrator ( the old man in TRON with the REALLY TALL hat) that something went wrong.  If nothing went wrong, scurry back and take a message $ to my user that this has all been done.

I don't know but it might possibly be that there is a much easier thing to do for both the programmers and the "user" the teachers.

a) We presently have the function in the formal spreadsheet / gradebook to "slider" exams / whatever.

b) Let us suppose that the teacher is watching one exam and one quiz.

c) the teacher can ust "grab and slide" the "thing"  to the left so that one can easily see the thing(s) and the name of the students.

c) The teacher can then easily see "who has done what".

I will now make a small suggestion, of little worth.

It would be a LOT EASIER to program a function "at the top of the student name column" an option which is similar to what is in Blackboard. > e-mail selected students<

And, since the teacher can actually view who has done what then....

The teacher simply selects the students who have not done something, or conversely have done something, and then ticks > e-mail selected students" and types in the message.

It would be a lot more "extensible" for the teacher to type in a particular message for a particular situation ---- or to copy and paste a pre-designed message "--- and click send than to fiddle with a possible drop down message.

And it would also be easier than searching through students out in the cells of the gradebook.

ANOTHER VERSION OF THIS would be to have a function in which the teacher "right clicks" a student and has the option to e-mail the student.

Either of these would then "call" back to the e-mail module.

Clicking > e-mail selected students< would be going at it from the left side, as it were, and right clicking would be going at it from the right side, however, right clicking requires the addition of a popup information bubble and an extra function call.

But, either would probably be easier than a "what if" type function.

Of course each and every person reading this has her, or his, "vision" about what the "message students who... " means.

And, of course, what I just posted is what I, personally, think of for the function and is not necessarily what is under discussion and others will view what I posted in their own lens.  ( There are those who say that James is kinda myopic btw   )

So all of the above is just a comment and of little worth.

james

[Renee_Carney]

Greetings Matt Lewis

Will you check out the Message Students Who section of Canvas Release: Analytics Beta (Course Grade) and let me know if this matches what you were seeking!  I know it's not out of the gradebook directly, but it sounds like it accomplishes your same goal?

[ethomas48]

My Canvas admin just spent many days trying to help me create a workaround to mimic the function that I think is being requested here. My scenario: Students must complete two assignments by Thursday of week 1 to be considered "on track". So what I really need is a way to look at both assignment statuses and send each student one of four different messages:

1) Yay! You've completed both assignments. What a great way to start this course!

2) Good start! You've completed assignment A but you also need to complete assignment B to be on track in this course. Please complete it before Friday evening.

3) Good start! You've completed assignment B but you also need to complete assignment A to be on track in this course. 

4) Let's talk! There were two assignments due last night and you did not complete either one of you. What is can I do to remove the roadblock that is keeping you from moving forward in this class?

In Bb, I would just add a non-student-visible, non-graded column in the gradebook and give each student a "code" of 1 to 4 depending on their status. I could then message based on that code. That's what I asked my admin to help me do in Canvas. Adding such a column and using this way is pretty much impossible, as far we can tell. 

Soooo ... I fully support the ability to message students based on the status of more than one column. Knowing what I know about databases, I think that creating this functionality will be very challenging. Should that be the case, can you please just let us add a "dummy" column, as we could do in Bb, to use for whatever purpose we need?