There are some assignments that go out to the majority of my students except one or two per class. It would be great to be able to assign to "everyone" and then have a button to select which students are exempt from the assignment.
I think a feature that would add the ability to further customize which students receive specific assignments is a great idea. Just another tool to personalize and target instruction.
I often need to exclude student from assignments for illness - particularly concussions. It would be really helpful if they just didn't see the assignment, as sometimes the concussed kids can't remember we've discussed the fact they've been excused.
Thank you for this feature discussion. I am not certain we will add exceptions option to differentiated assignments. I will add this idea to my backlog for future consideration, but this is not something we would implement in the near future. I suggest we archive this idea for future consideration in development.
I appreciate the willingness to keep this idea in the backlog. I'm not certain that any of us provided a clear picture and enough info. With the trend toward personalization and standards-based teaching, mastery and grading, any tool that can support and improve teacher efficiency would be helpful. Also, the requirements of 504 and IEPs in K-12, and just because it is best instructional practice, our teachers are daily differentiating and accommodating for student needs. Let me share a couple K-12 examples--
1)High school on-level US History teacher teaches 150 students. 20 of those need quiz accommodations--maybe fewer questions or less answer choices. Those students are in every section of the course, and the teacher, without everyone except, would type in 130 names when creating the "regular" quiz and 20 names for the "modified" quiz. Teachers don't have time to type in all those names, so they've devised "creative" naming conventions (with 2 quiz versions in their modules, both available to the students with accommodations--which is very confusing to the struggling student) or other strategies--as we don't want to embarrass students or reveal confidential information. Or they use paper for the quiz instead.
2)Fourth grade teacher has 25 students and teaches all subjects--English, Reading, Math, Social Studies, Health, and Science. For each quiz, again, without everyone except, she is typing in names in every quiz, in every subject.
Maybe we're missing something, and there's an easier way to do this in Canvas, if so, please let me know. I'm just trying to further clarify,as with 9000 secondary students in Canvas for all courses, this idea support instructional needs for our teachers and students. I'm sure that Instructure has a long list of feature ideas and requests that compete with each other, just hoping this adds further info for further consideration. Thanks. Lisa Casto
Thank you for this. I do understand the use case. I appreciate you taking the time to provide more detail. These are use cases I can see for this particular feature. There are other issues I think we should solve first, and that is where I would like to focus. I have this idea in my backlog. When it's time to look at some major work for assignments, I will definitely consider this as an enhancement.
I would love to see this feature. I am having the same issues as everyone else. The time it takes to individually select 17 students because 1 does NOT receive the assignment is ridiculous. Creating customized sections will not work with our SIS.
That is a very difficult question to answer. It is not that we don't want to build all of the awesome ideas, it is a balance of current projects, projected priorities, and resources. We will update threads as we have more information.
I'm really confused why A) this does not already exist (it exists in every other similar content delivery system I have used, even the free ones), B) why it is a complicated fix that would require backlogging, and C) why it is not a priority when the entire reason K12 districts are choosing to go to systems like Canvas is because of the need for differentiation. I'm hoping the reason is that they are working on a better way to offer differentiated exams overall, the work around of creating multiple quizzes and assigning them to different individuals is doubly annoying since we are not able to simply copy exams or questions when making a modified version of an assessment.
Even if this is being worked on, in the meantime, the option to exempt an individual from an exam seems like a given. I have 98 students in my frosh course, and it takes me a half hour just to assign everyone to their proper exams.
Or is K12 just the "redheaded stepchild" and I'm unaware?
