[ARCHIVED] Top Two Most Important Ideas for K12 Canvas Users

[scottdennis]

In Canvas Feature Ideas​ the top ten ideas that are tagged with k12​​ or k_12 are currently:

1. Parental observation in canvas complicated with three children! (209)
2. Remove the teacher graded portions of a quiz from a student's final grade calculation until they are... (58)
3. Automatically Generated Report for Parents (35)
4. Have Observer Calendar/To Do Match Student's (35)
5. Allow a parent observer to sign up for an appointment (27)
6. Hide Student Grade Summary from Account Level (25)
7. See Quiz Statistics by Section (23)
8. Term Dates Should Include Exact Time (19)
9. Calendar at Login (15)
10. Sync Grade Categories with PowerSchool (4)
    
    

Which of the ideas listed do you think are the most important?

What other Canvas Feature Ideas​ exist that you think should be tagged k12​ ?

[clong]

As I look at this list I am in dismay that these are truly the "Top Features" any k12 school would want and I'd like to know a little more about the why and how?

Just looking at the top feature Add formatting options for module headers (68) I'm not sure why it was tagged k12​ is this due to the person who submitted/requested it? Or did somebody try to determine if this is what the k12 community is really excited about or really needs? Was a survey put out from our CSMs that I might have missed? I'm not so sure I think you can easily tag feature ideas to be #k12 since Canvas doesn't really have a separate #k12 platform.  The formatting modules headers feature would benefit k12 and Higher Ed so I don't think this should be tagged k12.

The next feature on the list (63) was clearly submitted by someone from Higher Ed and one person commented on how k12 needs this. It's not something that comes up a lot, it would be nice, but I don't think it would make a top 10 list for k12.

If there is a need to tag things k12 my suggestion would be:

1) Tag all ideas by who submits them. So if someone from a k12 institution submits a feature idea it is auto tagged or that is part of the submission process.

2) Only tag ideas k12 that would absolutely be of NO use to higher ed.  Looking at the list above I think that would be 4, 5 & 10 but there are other ideas not on this list that I think k12 schools would value much more.

Based on my interactions with k12 teachers in my district, the community, and 2 other school districts in Southern California here are some features that would definitely be on a top 10 for K12 list.

1. ​ (209) and getting at the same purpose is ​ (35)
2. ​ ( 3) (8) and ​ (10) are essentially all getting at the same use case and are super biggies that K12ers want but I don't think it's just a k12 want/need.
3. ​ (179) and then ​ (2) again this really is not just a k12 feature.
4. ​ (25) and (163) is something a lot of teachers would like because they don't want to have to use another gradebook in addition to Canvas. Many times they need some printed reports and some districts require a print out to be turned in at the end of the year. We finally got past this but it is still an issue for many schools.
5. ​ (75) I'm going to speak up for our Innovators and Instructional Leaders using Canvas. When students do projects and turn them into Canvas, we'd love for them to be able to see, like (up vote) and comment on their peer's work without the need to officially assign a peer review to everyone for everyone. I don't think this is a just a k12 idea either because UC Berkeley has developed a jaw dropping Assets Library and Engagement Index that looks so good you can't believe it is not native Canvas. If only Canvas could or UC Berkeley could put that into the Apps or enable it in a feature flag. Watch:

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6. ​ (0) can't beleive this one didn't get any votes, there is at least one other one asking for the same thing. Oddly enough Firefox sizes the image so its fits (but offtimes is too small) and Safari/Chrome have it so it's too big with no way to scale it back down. A teacher just asked me about this today so it's fresh on my mind.
7. A lot of what is in Canvas Studio: Speedgrader 2.0​ is wanted.
8. Better Google, Google Drive and a Google Classroom Integration. Lots of ideas around this so I won't link them all. Take a look at any k12 ed tech conference and put all the titles and descriptions into a word cloud and guess what words will come out the largest? Here is one from a 2,000+ CUE Conference in the spring of 2015.

         

This community is great and it is super awesome for Canvas to be reaching out to their customers and giving us a vehicle and voice to connect with each other and help shape the product. It is a valuable resource and perhaps other methods should be considered as well. I know the teachers I work with give 150% to doing their jobs. They work at least 60 hours a week during the school year, planning instruction, teaching, giving students feedback, grading, answering emails and calls from parents, staying late to help students who are struggling. Many simply do not have the time to come into the community, search through ideas vote on them and campaign them. Even in my position, I'm busy planning, providing professional development and training, answering help tickets, researching other tools and working with teachers to build courses and instructional resources. Going through hundreds of feature requests is daunting, so typically what happens is the steam builds up because Canvas doesn't do something we think is a 'no brainer' and then we finally get to the point where we hit the featured ideas with a passion and then we run out of steam until the next blow up. So I hope Canvas will still use other methods of getting input like project khaki , feedback from the k12 csm team​ and even the sales team leadership​ (because they talk to a lot of educators).

Hope this doesn't have an attacking tone, I'm frustrated by the list but truly appreciative of the thought to try and identify some of the top things k12ers desire in Canvas and will do all that I can to help with the effort.

[scottdennis]

Hey  @clong ​,

Thank you for this very thorough and considered response.

To answer how an item gets tagged as K12 specific, it isn't a very scientific process and we do the best we can.  Usually the person submitting the feature idea says 'this is specific to K12 because we have this specific work flow or use case...' Or sometimes we tag an idea so based on similar comments left by others.  If I remember correctly the request for formatting of module headers originally came into the old community from a Park City Schools teacher who wanted to color code based on the colors used in their block schedule.  Looking through the comments on the idea here in this platform I can see Pro and Con camps that don't easily break out along K12/HE lines so I went ahead and removed the K12 tags.  You are correct - the Moderate Discussions idea was submitted by and HE person and even though the comments reference K12, they were mostly made by HE folks.  Tags removed.

I like the auto-tagging ideas but that isn't an option currently with the software we are using.  Tags have to be applied manually by either the person submitting or a community admin.

Parental Observation in Canvas...  Absolutely, that is top of the list.  I didn't even think to include it because it is already the top K12 related priority for our Product team but, you're right, formally it should be at the top of the list.

There is a lot of gray area when trying to decide what are priorities specific to K12 and what are simply priorities for K12 teachers that are also priorities for other educators as well.  Past a certain point trying to make those distinctions may not be all that helpful.

As far as the amount of time K12 folks have to devote to combing through feature requests and participating in forums on top of all the rest they are doing; I get it.  Having a spouse who was for a time a 5th grade teacher I have personal experience with the late night and early morning lesson planning, grading, etc.  What I'm hoping we can do here, with the help of amazing people like yourself and sampling of other K12 educators, get the most accurate picture possible of what our K12 clients need and what make them tick.

[clong]

Thanks  @scottdennis ​ this helps put things in perspective.

It seems like the Canvas Feature Ideas​ do have some great ideas and at the same time it feels like it's a 256 way tug-a-war that favors those who can put in a lot of time in selling the idea and yes sometimes, the idea is truly novel and you do see the community as a whole rally.

I'd be interested in exploring some sort of a process that would make the feature ideas space "more signal and less noise" but I know that could threaten the organic nature of being able to have a feature idea come from anywhere. Keep pressing forward and let me know how I can help.

[Chris_Munzo]

Yes, great comment by  @clong ​ about signal versus noise.  There are currently 34 pages of ideas open for voting right now.  (20 ideas per page.)  Over 2,200 ideas total.  I feel badly for people whose ideas get immediately archived because they are duplicates.  Not sure how anyone could keep track of all of this.  Can you boost the signal, or do you have to reduce the noise?  Either way, it will require some vetting of ideas by someone from Instructure or the submitting school.

[scottdennis]

Its a huge task for sure.  Seeing as we occasionally take weekend off that is about 28 new ideas to process each day - no small task when you consider that we are a team of four.  Trying to prevent duplicates, coach folks on writing clearly and concisely and moving ideas through stages takes at least 20 minutes per idea, or about 9.2 hours a day.  That doesn't even begin to describe the challenge for people in the community who want to keep abreast of what is being proposed and voted on.  One project we are currently working on is to create a series of dashboards so that users will be able to more quickly find ideas that are currently up for vote and relate to the user role, canvas feature, market type, and or activity that they care about.

[lsimpkins]

Number 2 in the list would be a HUGE help to our teachers!

[dtheriault]

Everything  @clong  said x1000

I'd also like to point out that the topic says "Top Two Most Important Ideas for k12 Canvas Users." The majority of our users are students and I'm not sure that my students would agree with any of that top 10, nor would many of my fellow teachers. While it's difficult to get students to become vocal members of the Canvas community, it would be cool if we could identify a top 100 k12 student Canvas Community contributors and have them become a focus group for product feedback.

[brueckert]

Gentlemen,

I'd like to add the following to the list:

This is incredibly important for any K12 school wanting to use the grading period feature. While not a flashy feature that improves instruction in the classroom, it would allow us to report grades at the end of the Trimester, stay in one course for the year, and keep running totals of Learning Mastery data. 

[scottdennis]

Thank you Brian.

If it helps anyone, I need to refine this list between now and next Thursday.

[jschurrer]

Can you add all the grading issues to this list?  Those seem to be pressing with a significant amount of frustration

[clong]

Yes, that's always the number one complaint I hear.

[Eric_Roussel]

I would say #1 and #4. I still believe that notifications errors for observers will need to be addressed if we are to create effective observers roles.

[bbelew]

Most of the parents stuff could all be merged into one IMO.   Also the parent observer portion needs some management tools.  For example with PowerSchool integration,  it should create the parent account automatically.   Maybe automatically creating the parent account based on the parent email address in PowerSchool, emailing them a setup link that they complete to finish up passwords and notification preferences. 

For the 3 or more issue - a different type of observer for parents would be best, with a different GUI.   They could be organized like PowerSchool is with single sign on.   One interface, with tabs across the top for each child, maybe with a combined iCal feed with all children.

The categories issue with PowerSchool to my understanding was a limitation in the PowerSchool API.  

[tlofinch]

#1 and #3

[tlofinch]

I also think this is a big one that mainly impacts K12

Default Grading Schemes at the Account Level

[KristinL]

Chris said some great things. Not all of the items on the list are "K-12 Specific" and there are additional submitted features that would be helpful to K-12 accounts. However, I'm very excited that progress has been made with the  " modifiedtitle="true" title="Parental observation with multiple students! That's awesome.

Based on the original list of ten and the comments I've heard from teachers in my building (grades 9-12), I would say:

Remove the teacher graded portions of a quiz from a student's final grade calculation until they are...

And for our Canvas Admin and Student Services team:

Term Dates Should Include Exact Time

[dianepbh]

Unfortunately, very few of these are priorities in our K12 setting. I also agree that there is simply so much to trudge through that great ideas get lost. Just looking through all the ideas can take hours and frankly, most teachers are simply too busy to do that and admins find them selves in the same predicament. So although we might want to vote and add, we do not have the time to do so.

Some of our top priorities are:

• quizzes that ban be tied to rubrics and proficiency grading.
• outcomes that can be edited after initial  publication (wording matters and we need to edit as we find rubrics that are confusing to kids)
• ability to freeze student notification settings (depending on teacher or school or sub account needs)
• default open view to the calendar view is an important one that is mentioned above
• a wider variety of reports that meet K-12 needs
• observers (TAs etc) who can have the ability to search entire database of a sub-account for a student. (Yes.. we can give them an admin view with locked down permissions, but an observer view with more specific capabilities is needed.)
• Printing the Grade book and Printing the course
• etc...

Diane

[scottdennis]

Thank you, Diane,

I definitely can understand your frustration with regards to both the sheer volume of ideas to sift through and the relative numbers of admins to teachers and students.  That is part of why focus groups and discussions like this one are so helpful.

[bbelew]

The outcomes portion is lacking greatly in my opinion.  I think you should be able to tie a standard to a question, or group of questions, not just to a rubric or test bank.   

[asatkins]

Here is my two cents- I am a K12 admin and I wrote #2 and tagged it K12 because I am K12. I think part of the tug of war is that the needs of fully online K12s vs hybrid K12s vs brick and mortar K12s can be HUGELY different.

For example, moderating discussions was mentioned above. We're fully online. If a 5th grader posts a picture from his older sibling's porn stash at 8pm his time in Indonesia and our teacher sees it in 8 hours after 1/3 of the rest of 5th grade has seen it, we're talking lawsuit. Are there reasons higher ed cares about these features? Sure, derailing conversations with wrong information, etc. For our students it can easily be a legal issue. If you're in the classroom with that student you're more likely to get immediate feedback (someone raises their hand 45 seconds after it's posted) and have immediate options for dealing with the student in breach. You march that student to the principal's office and call mom and dad. You probably also have that discussion board locked until you're standing in the classroom. We have fewer options for dealing with the issue and a bigger lag time before an adult sees it, and we don't lock assignments because we're work at your own pace. We're having to choose between interactivity and flexibility because we can't have open ended unmoderated interaction that is safe. We have to prove to our accreditation agency that we have taken all reasonable precautions, a standard that is much higher for online only schools. Leaving open unmoderated discussion threads isn't 'all reasonable precautions'.

In some cases, the needs of fully online K12s almost match up better with fully online HE. In some cases all K12s will care more about the same things (observer issues, for example) but I think it's hard for either an individual school or Canvas community to say conclusively what is K12 or does matter to K12s and what isn't and doesn't.

That being said, I completely agree that the current community is overwhelming and impossible to stay on top of all relevant information. I would love to see all features sorted by feature related, not by votes. I know this can be done by tags, but when you can type in any tag you want, that means things still get tagged funny and missed. I know at a glance if I care about observers vs if I care about groups. I do not care about groups, I do care about observers. If I could limit out the 20 high rated groups-related feature requests and instead see the 10 low rated but good ideas about observers I would feel much more confident that I am doing my due diligence to stay on top of what matters to my students and institution. I would love to see a 'follow' or 'unfollow' option for each big picture Canvas feature as well, so I could select one time all of the features I care about seeing and unselect all of the ones I don't. That way once I reviewed all of the ones I 'follow' each month I could call it done confidently instead of giving up after combing through the first 8 pages of top rated feature requests every 30 days and hoping I didn't miss something low rated that I would have loved.

[Chris_Munzo]

That's a great post by  @asatkins ​.  There are a few topics incredibly relevant to me, yet I sometimes miss them due to sheer volume.

In a previous post in this thread,  @scottdennis ​ mentioned that the Instructure people assigned to the Community are working at or near capacity to review, categorize and de-duplicate ideas.  So it seems to me that for any real change to occur, there are two choices: a) fewer feature requests; or b) more organization.

Based on the fact that there are 33 pages of features (20 per page) currently open for voting -- and only the first 7 of them have ideas with even 20 votes (!!) -- I suspect (a) is worthy of some discussion. 

[dianepbh]

Threaded discussions are a great place to generate a discussion but not the most effective place to organize a discussion. If decisions are made primarily based on our voting or not voting, some essential features and ideas could be missed-- in fact I have seen some archived ideas that could have improved core Canvas dramatically.

A good look at the discussions to then generate a more organized decision-making process (not voting) could benefit core Canvas. I wonder how perhaps a board  (aka organized group) of actual/current users - not Canvas support staff but folks in the field (for example: K-12, K-12 virtual, Higher Ed, Higher Ed virtual) could shed light on brainstorms in order to inform decisions? Canvas does a good job allowing voices from the field to generate ideas. Perhaps taking that one step further so that those ideas can be prioritized by the field (not via voting) is worth considering.

[scottdennis]

 @dianepbh ​,

I really like that idea.

To shed a little more light on how we consume information gleaned from the feature idea forums.  We have the formal process whereby any idea that gets above the votes threshold is guaranteed to be discussed in a weekly meeting of product and community managers.  In prep for that meeting we read through all the comments on the thread, review related threads, directly contact some posters for more information and/or clarification and generally try to be ready to explain why people want what they do.  Then product managers agree to respond to the idea formally and we continue to track it and update periodically. 

In addition we have a list of top priorities that we maintain that is partially based on votes, and partially based on how K12, mobile, Admin related ideas garner votes compared to other ideas in their category, partially on feedback from focus groups that we form periodically, often from people who have posted in the threads, and partially on feedback that comes in from other sources, including CSMs client calls and Support tickets.

As for tagging and surfacing ideas by category, like I've said before, we're working on setting that up.   One technical limitation with the current platform is that only people who originally post an idea and community admins may tag an idea.  There isn't really a good way to crowd source tagging. Which is sad 1. because it makes for a bottleneck and 2. because the Instructure community team isn't going to know the needs of, for example K12 virtual schools, anywhere as near as they do themselves. 

One work around that I thought of was having a widget that surfaces a given tag (k12 online for example) and then have a link to a related discussion where people could propose additional ideas to be tagged with the same tag as the widget.  There might even be discussion back and forth over which ideas should be tagged for a given constituency and which are not specific to that group's needs.  We CMs could follow the discussions and try to keep up with tagging suggestions from the community at large.

Maybe something like:

Deactivated user​,  @biray ​,  @Renee_Carney ​,  @rseilham ​,  @clong ​, stefaniesanders​,  @kona ​,  @Chris_Munzo ​,  @asatkins ​,  @KristinL ​

[asatkins]

I think that would certainly help, but I still think that we need some way to standardize tags or the sorts and any potential widgets will keep being limitedly useful.

A lot of the great ideas might still be getting lost because you're following the "K_12" widget instead of the "K-12" or "K12". Anything you type in can become a tag. I get that those custom tags are really important as new ideas/uses of Canvas emerge, but it makes life difficult when you're trying to sort by tags. Maybe have 'preferred' tags that are a different color that you can sort by but not add to, and then 'normal' tags that you can't sort by but anyone can type in what they want? If there were maybe 60 or so 'core tags' for features, platforms, user groups, etc that would make life easier for people just interested in certain features. These tags could even be multiple answer style checkboxes so you don't have to have existing knowledge of them to choose the relevant tags. I think that might encourage more people to accurately tag in the first place.

I also think that suggesting a tag is a great idea to help manage them, so if someone created a great idea that isn't getting attention because it's not tagged/tagged incorrectly the rest of the community can help out.

I'm all for anything that helps things to not fall through the cracks. That is my biggest complaint with the community, I feel like no matter how much of my day or week or month I devote to the community it's so huge and sprawling that I'm ALWAYS missing something that would have been important to me. I'd like to see tag widgets for discussions too, but I think they should be a different dashboard so we're not getting 1,400 results coming back for all conversations and feature requests that have ever been tagged 'quiz'.

Here is my initial list of my guess at relevant 'core tags':

K-12, Higher Ed, Corporate, International, Residential/Brick and Mortar, Fully Online, Hybrid, Mobile, Flipped Classroom

Announcements, Discussions, Groups, ePortfolios, Assignments, Assignment Groups, Assignment Settings, Quizzes, Quiz Groups, Quiz Banks (It is SO confusing that these are different things ), Quiz Settings, Quiz Question types, Speedgrader, Course Gradebook, Student Gradebook, Calendar, Modules, Module Requirements, Files, Student Files, and so on.

Accessibility, Permissions, Security, Integrations

Student, Teacher, TA, Designer, Observer, Custom roles, Custom Admins, Account Admin

I think if we had the option to follow either all 'quiz' tagged things or only 'quiz setting' and 'quiz question types' tagged topics we would end up seeing more of what we want to see than if we had to follow 'multiple attempts' 'view correct answers' 'multiple answer' 'multiple dropdown', etc and hope we catch all of the ways people think to describe what they're talking about.

[scottdennis]

Just for testing I added a widget on the overview page that filters to "mobile" or "ios" or "android"  I'm hesitant to add too many widgets to the overview page as this could cause the page to load more slowly but we are looking at options in other places in the community.

[asatkins]

Is that live somewhere? That sounds fun

[KristinL]

I need to start by saying one thing: communityteam​, you are absolutely amazing. You have the incredible task of keeping so much organized. The volume of content that is created and that needs to be distributed to the many branches of the Community is mind-blowing. What types of tagging features would help you gather data that you need from the various groups? I like the idea of widgets, but like you mentioned in a post further in this thread, the landing pages can be weighted down.

 @asatkins ​, you explained my frustration really well. I thoroughly enjoy the community, but no matter how much time I can find to engage in conversations, browse ideas, write posts, etc., I am worried that I will miss something big.

I hesitate with tags only because there is so much overlap within some of the feature ideas. Something may pertain to just K-12 while something else could be K-12, mobile, and higher ed. We need to find the "sweet spot" between just enough tagging to help people find what they need and tag overload where people spend more time assigning sortable tags rather than developing the content itself. In other words, how many tags is too many tags? I do like Amanda's idea of using a set of preselected tags for ideas so users don't need to generate their own. You can then select from a list rather than guessing which tag someone else may have used.

Would there be a way to create a pyramided style support or voting for ideas? For example, the open voting for one cycle could move an idea "up a level" where top users, admin, community team, etc. could discuss and cast a second round vote. That way, all users, regardless of level, could participate in an initial vote and provide feedback. After a lower set of votes, the idea would automatically move forward. Then, the next round could really evaluate pros and cons and throw in their own "wildcards" that may have been missed in prior rounds of voting before moving to in development or under consideration. While I'm not sure if this is possible, it could move new ideas through the gates a little more quickly so we don't have the constant race to 100. While vote count matters, it's not everything.

[clong]

I like this idea of pyramided style support or voting!

[clong]

I think this will help (a little) and is worth doing. As others have clearly articulated the volume is the BIG problem.  Limits per institution could help, then you would have to consider the huge pool of free for teacher users.

I'm also concerned that that there is little to no student voice in the process. What are the top two features students want?

[scottdennis]

On a related note; we are looking for students who are willing to do a conference call/webinar to talk about what they want in Canvas.  Please DM me if you can help with that.

[dtheriault]

Sent you a DM. Sorry, hadn't checked the community over the weekend.

[kona]

 @dianepbh ​, Canvas actually did something similar to what you are suggesting last April. It was called Project Khaki and it involved bringing together all different types of Canvas users (K12, Higher Ed, Instructors, Admins, Instructional Designers, etc), putting them with a Canvas Project Manager (who could help & answer questions, but didn't take the lead on things), and then allow them to talk through (bargain, wheel and deal, etc) with each other over what we thought should be the top priorities for Canvas - Project Khaki: How Instructure and the Canvas Community Connected.

I was lucky enough to participate in this event and found it to be a great experience and a chance to not only share my thoughts/opinions, but to better understand what goes into getting feature ideas and bug fixes implemented.

[Chris_Munzo]

 @asatkins ​ makes some good suggestions but it might be a band-aid for a broken arm.  The root problem is that there is just too much volume.  I would like to find a way to fix that.

[scottdennis]

Hey  @Chris_Munzo ​,

Just for background here are some of the ideas we have considered for limiting the volume of idea submissions:

1. Only allow individuals to submit a certain number of ideas per time period - not an option in the current software and probably easy to game anyway
2. Move feature voting into a space where only certain people have access - not our style
3. Sort incoming feature ideas into separate spaces by user role - high potential for error or disagreement on how sort
4. Make it so that only people with a certain point level in the community can vote - would skew to people active in the community and not capture ideas from people willing to post an idea but maybe that don't have the available time to participate regularly

We're definitely open to other ideas or feedback on these ones.

[KristinL]

Wow. This could be a very amazing discussion in it's own thread!

You're right. If you want to maintain the openness and level of collaboration of the community, there are many challenges to face.  @scottdennis ​, would there be a way for a small group to meet synchronously (possibly outside of Jive) to collaborate, brainstorm, and/or troubleshoot? I would enjoy to be part of discussions, and the more flexible format would be nice. The threaded discussions, while helpful in most cases, can be cumbersome to absorb and contribute to efficiently.

[scottdennis]

Sometimes we do bluejeans or Adobe connect based focus sessions.  Maybe we could create a poll for people to self identify what areas of the product/markets/roles they'd be willing to participate in focus groups around.

[asatkins]

We would be really interested in that. We get UX surveys all the time, but it feels like about 50% of them are on features we don't use. If we could 'opt in' to certain conversations we'd love to participate.

[Chris_Munzo]

Hey  @scottdennis ​ -- I don't think you want to restrict voting.  I would suggest you want to restrict submission of ideas.  What if any feature idea had to be submitted by a single representative from each school -- only one submitter per school.  Maybe even on a voluntary basis if Jive won't allow submission by restricted privilege.  This will give you a de facto screening process and definitely cut down on the volume.  Not as democratic as Instructure normally is, but this problem is only going to get worse as your company keeps growing.

[bbelew]

Setting up a group of community members of each institution type to moderate incoming ideas would make more sense than making it harder to submit or vote.   Maybe where that group could discuss an idea and of course weed out duplicates before it even becomes public, and let them tag it to the appropriate K12, Higher Ed, etc.