[Assignments] Assignments Page - Needs Arrow or "Next" for Easy Scrolling to Avoid Using Back Button Each Time

[hrussell]

Assignments Page - Needs Arrow or "Next" Button for Easy Scrolling to Avoid Using Back Button Each Time - Please.

On the Assignments page, I currently have about 20 assignments uploaded for the rest of the semester. I need to make small edits to some of them and each time I need to do so, I have to select the assignment, edit the assignment, hit the back button, select a new assignment, edit the assignment, hit the back button, REPEAT.

It would be FANTASTIC to get an ARROW or NEXT assignment button on the main Assignments page (when in editing mode AND when viewing the assignment in general) for easy scrolling. It is so time consuming to have to use the back button (esp. for people w/ slow internet speeds).

Please look into this!

Thanks,

HLR

[BrendaHoolapa]

Suggestion to have "next" button on assignments like we do on Modules (even if only for instructors) to help navigate assignments - would help make editing assignments easier to be able to just go hit the "next" assignment to edit vs having to go back to the full list of assignments, selecting the next one to be edited.  Thanks for thinking about it!

[James]

This is an intriguing idea.

The quick fix is to hold down the control (command for Mac users) key when you click on the link. Then it opens in a new window and you don't have to click the back button. I routinely open all of the assignments for a chapter, then go to each page and click Edit for each one. I do that since it takes some time to load the edit screen, so I get them all in edit mode and then I can make the changes faster.

If you don't like holding down a key, you can right click and choose to open in a new tab.

Back to the idea, though. Like I said, it was intriguing. I've written some code in the past to take make Canvas easier to use. My immediate thought wasn't the keyboard shortcut, but that I could write code that would do that. Between the time I saw the idea and clicked on it to see what it was about, my mind changed to "What is Next?"

For teachers, the logical "next" would be the next item in the order that it appears in on the Assignments page. That is where you said that you were coming to an assignment from. But if I was coming to an assignment from the Calendar or the Gradebook or SpeedGrader, that might not be what I was expecting to be "next." I might want the next one chronologically, but is that by due date or when it closes?

If the assignment is part of a module and accessed from the modules page, then the "next" that already exists would be confused with the "next" that gets added for the assignment. You would need to make sure that there is no module item included in the URL, but then you have the issue that sometimes Next takes you to one place and sometimes to another and that's a bad user experience.

As for having the next there when editing, this would cause a lot of problems for people. There is a vocal group that gets upset whenever Canvas doesn't automatically save something. Having a next on an edit screen would confuse people who meant to hit save -- but then they wouldn't be on the edit page anymore. Having the link on the edit screen would be a way to say "cancel this and move on" which isn't what is being described.

I wrote a script for SpeedGrader that added an "Update and Advance" or "Save and Advance" button. A similar functionality might be used here. Note that Canvas hasn't adopted my script's behavior. It can be confusing if you don't know what it does.

As I was typing my response, I remembered that getting the list of assignments in the order they appear on the assignments page can be a lengthy request. I have lots of assignments in my classes and it can take several seconds to get the complete list of assignments to know what is next. Canvas doesn't have the code to get just the next assignment

I have some loose criteria for deciding which things to help with. After thinking through the whole process, I won't work on writing a script to provide this functionality. It fails almost every criteria on my list. There is a relatively easy solution available, it's ambiguous what should happen, the solution potentially adds confusion when the assignment is in a module, it's a lengthy request to get the data (meaning it wouldn't appear on the page immediately), and there is limited demand for it.