Assignment Labels

[akryzh]

Problem statement:

Currently, Canvas does not allow differentiation between required, optional, and bonus points assignments. To address that, some instructors do not add due dates to optional and bonus points assignments to differentiate them from those that are required, but this results in a different problem: those tasks do not show up in students' to-do lists and may easily be overlooked. Since these assignments are still visible on the list of published assignments, some students attempt to complete them in batches at the end of the semester, which often defeats the purpose of the assignments.

Proposed solution:

Having clear labels/ indicators for different types of assignments would address this issue and signal to students the required elements and those that can deepen their learning if they wish to do so. It would also allow instructors to assign due dates to those optional assignments as they do with the required ones.

User role(s):

instructor,student

[ModeratorPanda]

I am happy to share that this can be achieved by changing the name of assignments to help meet the needs of instructors and students. Including terms like "Bonus," "Optional," and "Required" at the beginning of the name will help students more discriminate between those types of assignments on the various places where lists of assignments appear. To save space, instructors could also use an emoji or symbol at the beginning of the assignment name.

To help our Product Teams evaluate new ideas, this thread has been moved to our Will Not Consider status.