Add groups to differentiated assignments

[James_Kocher_UF]

  This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

  Idea will be open for vote May 5th, 2015 - August 5th, 2015  Learn more about voting...

It would be nice to have the ability to choose groups in the dropdown for differentiated assignments.  That way, you could have separate deadlines for group projects within the same assignment.  And even better, you could add a student to a group if she needs extended time turning in an assignment!

  Comments from Instructure

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas.

For more information, please read through the Canvas Production Release Notes (2016-03-12)

[marek]

Yes, please implement this feature. I teach lab classes. Sometimes, I have four different modules occurring concurrently, so each group has a different assignment due date.

For example, let's say my students are broken down into four groups (Team-1 through Team-4). Team-1 and Team-2 have assignment A due on 6/8, but Team-3 and Team-4 have assignment A due on 6/15. Right now my only options are

A) figuring out which students are in which groups, and manually adding each student to the due date for each assignment (I might have 12+ assignments)

or

B) have our Canvas admin create special (fake) course sections for each of my groups, invite students into the correct course section at the beginning of the semester, and then just set each due date according to course section (which is what I do now, and very inefficient).

This latter method worked mildly well once I automated adding all the due dates with AutoHotKey (four class sections x six groups per section x 15 assignments is a lot of due dates to enter), but I still have to have someone send out the invites to these new fake sections to the correct students. If I try to batch add students to these new fake sections, it removes them from the original, real section.

[jared]

The Groups feature in Canvas is strong, but we could definitely enhance it by integrating it in more places. This is a great example.

The more integrated Groups is through the platform, the more visible -- and, I hope, enticing -- it will be to faculty.

[pwalsh]

Yes, please! I teach several inclusion classes, and I modify assignments for students with special learning needs such as reading difficulties or English language learning. It would be great to put the kids who get the same assignment for a learning target into a group where they can then be assigned the work that's appropriate for them. When I put in individual names I just know that I'll be forgetting people occasionally.

[jsparks]

Hello Friends,

This makes sense, and I understand the necessity of the functionality. I will work to include this on a near term roadmap discussion for possible future implementation. I do not have a timeline at this point, but will update as I can.

Kind regards,

Jason

[bstafford]

Just want to add to this, adding the ability to assign to groups is a critical feature to this but in the meantime, the drop down menu only allows for seven names to appear and others must be typed in to view is a major shortcoming and should be addressed as well.  The ability to select students from a list would be a good stopgap before Groups get added to this feature.

[kona]

 @bstafford ​, per information provided by erinhallmark​, there is a reason the drop down displays a limited number of names. If it displayed everyone in the course it would really slow things down and potentially compromise the user experience. See below for her exact wording:

"...the differentiated assignments feature is designed for smaller segments (e.g. one or two specific sections, or a few individuals who need an extension). Therefore a significant amount of searching isn't entirely necessary. Additionally, displaying the entire section/user list is a significant pull on the Canvas database, especially for larger courses. There are actually two updates: the display addition helps people to know that they can search, and first-name search addition helps instructors/TAs who may not know a student by last name. Basically the team has tried to improve the feature as much as they can to make it more usable without compromising your experience from a performance standpoint." - https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-4170#comment-12936

[bstafford]

I realize the reason for the compromises to the feature but this reduces its effectiveness.  If I have an assignment that I want to assign to a group of students and there is no ability to select a group then the next logical thing to do is to select the students from a list. 

[amckale]

Reading through this topic, I think I have a valid scenario that is not discussed yet.  We have several courses that are co-taught by 2 instructors.  The assignments (including due dates) are the same for all sections.  There does not appear to be a way to connect specific sections to a specific instructor so that notifications and dashboards of the instructor reflect only those sections.  Other teachers alternate grading duties on assignments.  There does not appear to be a way to connect a specific teacher to a particular assignment for grading purposes.  Am I missing something?

[christine_mckeo]

Hi amckale​! I don't have an answer for the notifications/dashboard issue, but I think I might have one suggestion for the grading scenario. I'm not sure if this completely solves what you're looking to do, but if you have Teachers enrolled in the appropriate sections and then assign assignments to sections using the new differentiated assignments feature, the Teachers can then filter their grade book by section to see only the students they're responsible for grading. If teachers are also alternating grading duties, they can be enrolled in multiple sections as appropriate. I don't think there's a way to explicitly tie an instructor to an *assignment,* but this might be a good work around.

[amckale]

Yes, the filtering by sections in Speed Grader and in the Gradebook works well.  We also use Pearson's Powerschool and the grade transfers are working well with multiple sections and grades going to the right place.  One thing that would help more is if the notifications could contain the section information (or better yet) be customizable with access to some information.)