Is there a way to disable course nicknames?

[marcvallance]

Hi All,

New to the Canvas Community.

Have had a request to disable students ability to nickname their courses. Found an old post from 2018 but wondered if anyone has done anything with this?

Regards

Marc
Canvas Administrator
ICT Leader

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello there, @marcvallance ...

To my knowledge, there is not a way to remove the ability to use course nicknames.  You may have already seen this discussion topic, but if not, I'll post it for you and others:

Removing the Ability to Add Nicknames on Course Ca... - Instructure Community

Sorry that I don't have better news for you, but I hope this has helped to answer your question.

[jerry_nguyen · Accepted solution]

@marcvallance 

You will need to have access to upload Custom CSS file (E.g. Root admin account), have a look at this article https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Admin-Guide/How-do-I-upload-custom-JavaScript-and-CSS-files-to-an...

The following CSS will hide the "3-dot" button which allows students to set course's nickname

.ic-DashboardCard__header-button {
    position: absolute;
    top: 12px;
    right: 12px;
    width: 36px;
    height: 36px;
    border-radius: 50%;
    visibility: hidden;
}

However, students can still disable the custom CSS from their browser.

[MikeBrinkman]

Here's a little JS hack I just cobbled together, in case you don't want to hide the entire block that lets them change card colors as well. Throwing it up here in hopes that it will help, and others will improve it.

function disableNicknames() {

  // need to delay this function from being called because the page takes time to load

  // 400 ms seems to be the shortest length that works reliably

  setTimeout(function() {

    // get the full list of buttons from course cards

    let moreButtons = document.getElementsByClassName('ic-DashboardCard__header-button');

    console.log(moreButtons);

    let nnLabel; // to be used later

    let clicks = 0; // This will stop errors from being reported when a user clicks the more button a second time.

    // loop through each button on the page

    for (i = 0; i < moreButtons.length; i++) {

      // when the user clicks on a ... button

      moreButtons[i].onclick = function() {

        clicks++;

        // if the number of clicks is odd, run the function

        if (clicks % 2 == 1)

        {

          // again, need to set a timeout. The nickname label & box will be visible for 200 ms

          // but it isn't too likely that they will be able to do anything with it.

          setTimeout(function() {

            nnLabel = document.getElementsByClassName('fCrpb_bGBk fCrpb_egrg');

            nnLabel[0].style.display = 'none'; // hide the label

            document.getElementById('NicknameInput').style.display = 'none'; // hide the input box

          }, 200);

        }

      }

    }

  }, 400);

}

[apettit]

Did you create the JS file in Notepad?  I cannot seem to get Canvas Theme to accept that script.  Thank you for any advice you can offer!