Differentiated Notifications for Differentiated Assignments

[jmd260]

Canvas allows for differentiated assignments; however, notifications for differentiated assignments go out to the entire class and not just the recipients of the differentiated assignments. So even if an assignment is differentiated (say in a multi-section course), notifications about that assignment, such as unmuting, will go to the entire class and not just the section for which the assignment is differentiated.

Let's say that you have a multi-section course with multiple instructors. Instructor A teaches Section A and Instructor B teaches Section B. Both instructors have a "Final" assignment (one for A and one for B) that are differentiated for their sections respectively. When Instructor A unmutes her assignment, all the students in sections A and B receive the notification that the assignment has been unmuted and their grades are ready EVEN IF the final for Section B is still muted. This causes great confusion for the students from Section B.

Please make it so that notifications for differentiated assignments are only sent to the students affected by the assignment.

[scottdennis]

Thank you for submitting this feature idea! Learn more about the feature idea process and how to champion your idea.

Your feature idea will be open for vote from Wed. November 2, 2016 - Wed. February 1, 2017.

[kroeninm]

I love consistency , I don't think there are too many notifications that go out but it would be confusing if a point change or Mute/Unmute happened you are right.

- Melanie

[jordan]

This idea has moved to the next stage and will be open for voting among the Canvas Community, from Wed. November 2, 2016 - Wed. February 1, 2017.

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

[jmd260]

I completely agree,  @kroeninm ​. Consistency for this would be much appreciated.

[johnpj]

I think there is a strong argument that this should be escalated as a bug fix.

[nuhsh715]

I agree that this should be a bug fix, not a feature request, but I'm voting for it to show my support of it getting fixed.

[leward]

Ditto...I would classify this as a bug.  Notifications should not be distributed to users to whom an assignment does not apply.

[curtain]

I am glad this is getting attention.  Despite being strong selling point for Canvas we find Notifications to be a hindrance often due to issues like this or granularity of the notifications.

[jdaggs]

Yes, at bare minimum, we need to be able to unmute by section, especially if we are running multiple sections out of the same course site.  I have a situation  now that one class meets MWF and the other TR, and I don't want to unmute all the grades at once, but I have to.

[Stef_retired]

 @jdaggs ​, that's actually a different feature idea, and I hope you will vote for it if you haven't already:

[cward]

I completely agree Canvas needs to improve the way we handle notifications, and improve the granularity of them. This is something we've thought a lot about internally, as well. I'll reach back out to this thread when I have any further updates on this from Canvas.

[jmd260]

Thanks, Deactivated user. Much appreciated.

[ejackson]

Has there been any further developments on this feature? I recently had a situation (yesterday, in fact!) where students are getting notifications that they don’t need to be getting. I don’t know if it’s been happening all along (for the past 2 years) and someone just now contacted us about it, or if it is something that just started happening with this course.

The course I have is a manually-created course, used strictly for students who need to use a computer text reader when taking tests. When an instructor submits a test referral for a student(s) with the “Tests Read” accommodation, I add a separate section in the testing course for that instructor, add the student(s) to that section, and make sure to choose the option that the student can see things for that section only. When I create a quiz for that section’s student(s), I choose that section only, and I make sure the checkbox for “Notify users this quiz has changed” is NOT checked.

However, upon research by our Internet Systems Specialist (James Jones) it appears that ALL students in that testing course get notified that the quiz was created, regardless of what section those students are in, and regardless of the fact that the “Notify” checkbox was UNCHECKED.

I just now tried logging in as one of the students in the testing course, and on their Dashboard was a notification from the testing course, for an “Unnamed Quiz”. This was  from when I clicked on the “Quiz+” button to open a blank quiz and check the wording of the checkbox at the bottom, just now, for this posting, and then cancelled out and deleted it!

This is disturbing to me. We set things up in separate sections, to try and protect students’ privacy regarding accommodations. They don’t need to be getting notified of quizzes in other sections of the course. Can’t something be done?

[jmd260]

I haven't heard anything yet on this front. 

[Renee_Carney]

The Radar idea stage has been removed from the Feature Idea Process.  You can read more about why in the blog post Adaptation: Feature Idea Process Changes.

This change will only impact the stage sort of this idea and will not change how it is voted on or how it is considered during prioritization activities.  This change will streamline the list of ideas 'open for voting', making it easier for you to see the true top voted ideas in one sort, here.

[abigail_smith_2]

This is definitely a bug, not a feature request.  Getting spammed with a bunch of notifications that don't apply to them will only make students not pay attention to their notifications anymore.

[ProductPanda]

Comments from Instructure

As part of the new Ideas & Themes process, all ideas in Idea Conversations were reviewed by the Product Team. Any Idea that was associated with an identified theme was moved to the new Idea & Themes space. Any Idea that was not part of the move is being marked as Archived. This will preserve the history of the conversations while also letting Community members know that Instructure will not explore the request at this time.