[Assignments] Assign to everyone except selected students

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.

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166 Comments
richard_gardner
Community Participant

@MVanSlyke And this is not the only thing that Canvas has ignored since 2015. There are plenty more, and they are also no-brainers like this. This and all the others have been ignored for so long (and these shouldn't take a rocket scientist to fix them; they ought to be easy to computer programmers and web designers) that I think Canvas is a lost cause, and we should all convince our institutions to abandon it. 

sara_samples1
Community Participant

It's been 8 years since I first requested this. I cannot believe I'm still having to type in 86 names instead of being able to "except" three students. 

kajsa_nalin
Community Member

@sara_samples1, thank you for requesting this. I too would so love for this to exist, having the exact same problem year after year.

RussellCGPS
Community Explorer

7 years this has been on here and constantly people are requesting it on other ideas, but Canvas ignores it. They clearly do not value the complexity that our classrooms present or how their product could mirror what happens within our classes. Apparently the mass adoption by K-12 due to COVID was just a money grab without any enhancements that benefit K-12. If our school district didn't respond to our community's needs for 7 years, you'd better believe that they'd fire the superintendents and the board would have turned over multiple times. But I guess you can under-deliver when your only competitors are the underwhelming Google Classroom and a Pearson-owned company.

KristinL
Community Team
Community Team
Status changed to: Added to Theme
 
vivat_bangurash
Community Participant
Problem statement:

Currently, assignments, quizzes, etc, default to being assigned to all students. If a student starts the course later in the semester/year, the to-do list makes it appear that they are required to do all past assignments which can be overwhelming. If a teacher wants to exempt or remove the student from the assignment, he or she must go back to the past assignments and enter all the names of the students who must complete the assignment. This is very time-consuming.

Proposed solution:

I propose an option/button by which teachers can de-select or exempt students from an assignment rather than having to list students who must complete the assignment. Currently, if a teacher wants to exempt or remove the student from the assignment, he or she must go back to the past assignments and enter all the names of the students who must complete it. This is very time-consuming. By including a de-select button, teachers will be able to easily remove newly added students from past assignments. Also, it will streamline student to-do lists and, thus, reduce undo stress caused by seeing a large list of past-due work when 1st starting a class.

User role(s):

admin,instructor,designer