Option to exclude Assignments from Syllabus

It would be good to have an option to exclude the Assignments Summary from the Syllabus page.  Many faculty wish to only have the Syllabus with a course description, lecture schedule, grading, and other policies.  Now if you have any assignments they are automatically put on the Syllabus page - this should be an option only.  Why have an Assignments page if you force a link also on the Syllabus page.  Other ideas describe how some faculty like the assignments on the Syllabus page, so it should be simply kept as an option.

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For more information, please read through the https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-18528-canvas-release-notes-2020-03-21 

82 Comments
kmeeusen
Community Champion

Hi gwk​, and thank you for submitting this feature idea.

As an instructor of fully online courses, I hate all of the assignment lists including the Assignment index page, the to-do list (in course and dashboard), Calendar and the Syllabus page. I want my students to work through my modules, and not skip learning materials while trying to jump straight to an assignment.

However, as a Canvas Admin I recognize that either the Syllabus or the Assignment Index page are very useful tools for hybrid or web enhanced courses, where many teachers make them for their home page in a course. That being said, I also find the Assignment list on the Syllabus page to be redundant, and agree that it should be optional.

I did find two very similar but archived feature ideas......

  1. (absolutely no one voted for this)
  2. (and no votes on this one, although  @biray  did add a great discussion for this one)

I will suggest that your idea open for voting during the next voting period. The next voting period starts tomorrow (9/7/16), so don't know if it will make that one, but............

You can learn more about the voting process at How does the voting process work for feature ideas?

KLM

biray
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

201207_pastedImage_3.pngThank you for your Feature Idea submission. We wanted to call your attention to   which was submitted in a different voting period, but archived due to lack of votes or inadequate response. (The idea that Kelley references was a duplicate of this idea, hencewhy it was archived immediately without going up for vote -- which is why there were zero votes.) You may want to reference these ideas for additional insight.

Since archived ideas can be re-submitted, your idea will be open for vote in the next voting cycle.

In the meantime, help your idea gain traction by posting a link to this idea in the comments of the other, archived idea (which will notify author and anyone who is following the idea) and share your idea to colleagues and peers as well.

bwaters
Community Novice

A feature that is long overdue!

mouldera
Community Participant

Tell me about it. We are open-entry, open-exit and CBE school. None of our assignments have due dates. I have to hide the dang Syllabus tool just to keep the faculty from using it. It's useless in its current form because all the assignments are listed in alphabetical order and NOT in the order that they need to be completed. It causes confusion for both students and faculty. It just needs to be fixed. Not everyone uses a semester-based terms. It would be nice if Instructure does give us the option to at least show the assignments or not. I have never been happy with this tool.

mouldera
Community Participant

I don't see any voting buttons. Is this not open yet?

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

This idea has moved to the next stage and will be open for voting among the Canvas Community, from Wed. September 7, 2016 - Wed. December 7, 2016.

Check out this doc for additional details about how the voting process works!

cdoherty
Community Participant

Yes, please. Many instructors want control over the look of their syllabus and refuse to post their syllabus in the Canvas Syllabus tool because they don't want the assignments table to appear. Since we are relying on the Syllabus tool to feed our institution's syllabus viewer (for students not yet enrolled and shopping for courses), instructors refusing to use it is a real problem.

skoogi
Community Member

This sounds like another efficient time saver with no downside.

waz107
Community Contributor

Yes! I would like to be able to have more control over what shows up on my syllabus scheduled in general. In addition to assignments, my class has three weekly group review sessions and after I added them to the calendar they all were added to that calendar on the syllabus page! This makes the syllabus page incredibly long with regularly occurring events that don't need to be there.

rtaylor2
Community Novice

Oh, yes----please, please, PLEASE give us the option to remove the course summary from the syllabus tool. Smiley Happy