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)

[kmeeusen]

Oh yah, baby! Now that's what I'm talkin' about!

[kona]

While I'm happy to see that we will now have differentiated group assignments, in reading the feature idea and comments I don't think this is what people really wanted. Specifically I don't think people wanted to always *grade* by group, just be able to assign deadlines or assignments/discussions/quizzes (especially quizzes) by group membership. I can think of a number of questions that have been asked in the Community about differentiated assignments and the use of groups, and the functionality of this new feature does not meet that need.

Ex 1: I have the same set of students (not a section and Instructor can't create a section in this scenario) that always needs to have different due dates/times on quizzes - think students with accommodations. Being able to create a group for these students and then the rest of the class would have made it super easy to use the differentiated assignment tool.

Ex 2: I have different topics that students get to pick from. The students from each topic have a different due date for when their various assignments are due; same assignments, just different deadlines. Yet, the students aren't working in a group, so I don't want them to submit one file/document for each assignment. I want them each to submit an assignment. In this case using the differentiate group feature would have been awesome because I could have easily created the groups and then assigned due dates for all the Assignments that this applied to.

The examples could go on and yes, I know this all could still technically be accomplished by picking individual students, but a lot of time could be saved by being able to use the group feature/tool. This is what I think a lot of us wanted when we voted and commented on the original feature idea.

[amckale]

Kona,

I totally agree.   When I went to try to use this beta feature it definitely was not what I was expecting and does not meet my need. 

[ccalderon]

Kona -

I agree with your response and your examples. While this is definitely a step in the right direction, it is not what I thought I voted for when this feature request was open.

[iys2]

Kona,

I was understanding it the same way you were, which would be exactly what would meet my needs as well.

[Renee_Carney]

Kona Jones, amckale​,  @ccalderon ​, &  @iys2 ​

Thank you for enriching the discussion around the ‘differentiated assignment by group’ feature.  You are correct, the thread for the original request was pretty rich in ideas for potential applications for this feature. We were not able to build for every potential use case in the time allotted for this idea. Incorporation of groups in the differentiated assignments workflow is the first step—one of many.

The asks we see here are more about assignment moderation and accommodations (more time given to a student for a task). This is not the purpose for which differentiated assignments was built; this tool is not intended to act as a mechanism for accommodations. Please follow and comment on this post for more information: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1542.  This idea has a strong focus on accommodations!

The main ask was to assign content to a group inside of Canvas, which is what we were able to accomplish—something users were not able to do prior to the release of this idea.  I see time in the future where we can expand on this functionality, but this is further into the future.

[hvaughn]

And since we're talking about groups, the feature idea   is now open for voting.  Please go and vote up!

[Renee_Carney]

Thank you to  @James_Kocher_UF  for submitting this idea, as well as,   @annmarie_johnso  place, cholling,  @fontanap ,  @RobDitto ,  @riggss , aw05022a,  @hvaughn ,  @christine_mckeo , Deactivated user,  @jared ,  @pwalsh ,  @bstafford ,  @kona , amckale, kenneth.wilson, frankel,  @hardinm ,  @iys2 , benjamin_denne, laura.herrmann, &  @ccalderon  for your contributions. Your investment in this idea helped refine a feature which is now part of the Canvas!

[James_Kocher_UF]

THE PROCESS WORKS, PEOPLE!!!

[rpeters3]

Thanks for the response, Renne!

I would add that it's not always about accommodation, though. The thread you linked to is very much much about accommodations on a student level, rather than a per assignment level, and the ability to use groups with differentiated assignments isn't always about that. We have instructors who make groups in their courses that are about teams that persist the entire class. Often, teachers will want students to submit individual assignments, but they want to use differentiated assignments to assign different dates to different groups, the same way they can with different sections. That's the functionality we're looking for, and I'm worried that since it wasn't implemented as part of this feature suggestion and isn't about accommodations, it's going to get lost.