[ARCHIVED] How do I make course content visible only to a certain group of students?

[marija_sajekait]

There is a Canvas course page for a large class I'm a TA for and I want to make some content visible only to student sections I'm teaching. I saw there's an option of making the content accessible only for students with a link but wouldn't that mean that students need to click this link each time they want to access the content? Or do they only need to click the link once and then they'll be able to access the content tailored for them each time they go to the main course page on Canvas? 

[NO_GO_AWAY · Accepted solution]

The fact that you are still offering 'work arounds' for the simplest functionality is indicative of your lack of understanding of your userbase and their requirements.

[nr2522]

Hi,  @marija_sajekait ‌.

I believe this will help you achieve your goal: How do I assign an assignment to a course section?.

[kona]

 @marija_sajekait , you can assign assignments, quizzes, and discussions to specific course sections  - https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-10434-4152669141 Yet, if you are wanting to assign course "content" like pages, files, links then this is a bit trickier. One work around is to add the course content to a (non-graded) assignment and then assign it to a specific section. Would this possibly work for you?

Kona

[NO_GO_AWAY · Accepted solution]

The fact that you are still offering 'work arounds' for the simplest functionality is indicative of your lack of understanding of your userbase and their requirements.

[burgerk · Accepted solution]

[22 Apr 2021]

Dear Gentle Reader,

I landed on this page the usual way I land on these pages. I was trying to simply create a makeup exam for a couple of students, and I only want those two students to see that the exam even exists. But yet, I have to publish the exam for them to take it, and when I publish it there is no option to publish it for only these two students. My seemingly only option is to publish the exam so the entire class can see that it exists.

NO_GO_AWAY, you hit the nail on the head. It should be a simple matter to create content of any type and make that content visible to only some students. We should not have to play these idiotic tricks that Instructure tells us to play, like creating a new section, etc ....

I swear, every single time I search for how to do something, I end up on one of these support pages, where the inevitable first reply to a question is, "Canvas cannot do that," to which they then follow-up with a statement such as, "But...., here is a workaround. If you stand on your head, put your left elbow in your right ear, blink your eyes 3 times, and wish for a miracle to happen, then you can make it work this idiotic way."

I am not kidding. It is the same stupid workaround message from the same fools EVERY TIME.

I have learned that Instructure simply does not give a **bleep** about their users. They do not care one bit because if they did, they would listen to us and implement the desparately needed changes we have to "beg" them to implement, but yet, nothing that is requested ever seems to be implemented. Not too long ago, I landed on another page because I was trying to make Canvas do something very simple that the fools at Instructure never thought would be something a user would want to do because they do not perform user studies analyzing how their user's use their product. The original request was posted in 2016 and it is now 2021, five years later, and the simple-to-implement feature has not yet been implemented, nor will it ever be. There are many, many more like that.

INSTRUCTURE NOT ONLY DOES NOT CARE, THEY TREAT US WITH CONTEMPT WITH THEIR IDIOTIC "WORKAROUNDS."

If one more of these fools tells me, "No, you cannot do that in Canvas, but here is a completely idiotic and entirely NON-OBVIOUS way to do what you are trying to do," then my head is going to explode and splatter the walls with brain matter. I CANNOT TAKE IT ANYMORE. I am sick and tired of spending 10-15 minutes trying to figure out how to do something which should be very simple and take no more than 1 minute, only to discover that, "No, you cannot do that in Canvas."

My university used to use a superior LMS named Blackboard and although I grumbed about a few things in BB, using BB did not make me want to beat the innards out of my computer with a sledge hammer the way Canvas does. My uni made an extremely bad decision when they ditched BB and decided to force this Canvas product on us faculty, but they cannot force me to actually use it. After this semester ends, I am saying goodbye to Canvas and I am going to switching to Moodle (https://moodle.org) which is another, extremely better open-source LMS, which I have successfully used in the past, but without all the headaches that come from having to endure Canvas. I urge more disgruntled Canvas users to take a look at Moodle. It is pretty nice.

Now, I must get back to work so I can spend the next hour or two trying to force Canvas to display a quiz to only two students in my class. Yeah, I know Canvas cannot do that, but like a fool, I keep thinking, "No, surely they cannot be that stupid, there has to be a way," but yeah, they are.

[ebrands]

The simplest approach may be to create content in Google Docs or other ways and then link to it in Canvas. Then if you need to share with only a few students it's easy enough to do this without asking Canvas for services this group is unable or unwilling to provide.

It makes loads of sense for universities to pay more for an inferior product with worse support than even Moodle had.  This is quite similar to the "training" materials that "consultants" are paid loads to deliver for CYA online training on behavioral and moral/ethical issues.  

[EmilyUngar]

There is a somewhat simple way to do this through the People > Groups option. Within a course, access the "People" tab and create a group, then a group within a group. Assign specific users to the group. That group will then have its own homepage that you can link to the homepage. 

From that homepage, you can create a set of pages, announcements, discussions, etc. It's not easy to navigate back to the course homepage from that group's homepage, but you can manually insert a URL that links back to the main page. This helped me in at least 2 courses.