[Assignments] Recurring Assignments

[sbrown11]

I am a college professor, and I frequently give recurring assignments such as a weekly reflection paper wherein the students answer essentially the same questions each week about that week's materials.

It would be great to be able to create this one time with the due date, points value, etc., and then make it recurring for every week rather than having to either create new assignments and copy/paste the content (but still assign all the values), or use Commons, which I find to be very cumbersome, and which still requires me to change all of the due dates, etc.

[ajohnson]

This is how I see the difference.

• Copying: A similar assignment is done more than once in a course, but has some difference and/or occurs irregularly, so the directions or settings would be changed. For example, a draft and a final version of a paper; weekly homework problems for which you must change only the chapters/pages/problems; something that happens 3 times in a term, at weeks 2, 4 and 9, so can't be an easily recurring time period (hmm, unless those recurrences could be set for any specific date/day?); a regular discussion that just changes the prompt/questions.
• Recurring: Identical assignments done 2+ times during a course. Only difference is the due date, at the most. For example, a weekly journal/log/blog. [Very specific example from a nursing clinical course with the same due date for all assignments: Students have to submit a case log for every 8 hours of clinical, up to 29 logs for a course. Students do there hours at various points in the term, but everyone must do 29 logs. Directions are identical for all 29 assignments. And it totally wasted time when we had to update the instructions for 4 such clinical courses....)

[ajohnson]

PS, for copying, it would be super handy to say you want to copy it X number of times. That would allow recurring ones to be more easily created if recurring isn't a possibility or comes later (since I imagine it's much more difficult to program).

[kristin_bayless]

Once added, it's important that a particular assignment can be altered without affecting the remaining assignments.  For example, due to a snow day or similar.  This reminds me of our calendar system when deleting a single appointment of a series when it asks if the deletion should only occur for the selected appointment or from this point forward.

[esommer]

A programming provision for recurring assignments is so important and would save enormous about time. All that cutting and pasting is annoying and then you have to reset the dates and all the other preferences for the assignment! So time consuming. Why just have screen option for recurring assignments and a list of easy to complete boxes for all the dates.

Speaking of "easy to complete boxes" . . . when a teacher imports a course and starts resetting dates, the program should recognize the new year and semester and move the calendar entry dates accordingly. (Yes, I know that when importing we can ask Canvas to "guess" the new semester dates, but it not very accurate--especially when assignments have odd due dates.

[jsparks]

Thank you, all, for the updates.  I see how this idea can be useful; however, as any implementation or delivery of this feature is more than six months away, I suggest we archive this conversation for now. I have added this idea to my backlog of possible features.

Regards,

Jason

[kmatson]

Hi again Jason,

Yet another opportunity to ask, where is Canvas on creating a copy tool?

Thanks and sorry for pestering you,

Karen Matson

[smoushabeck]

Hi Jason,

Per your comment, is it realistic to expect this feature to hopefully be available for this school year, 2016/17?  I have my fingers crossed.

Best,

Samar

[smoushabeck]

Guess what!  it has been done! 

However, I am not able to see this feature in my calendar yer.  What should I do?

[Stef_retired]

 @smoushabeck ​, per the comment in the beta release notes linked in the feature idea, and the guide How do I add a repeating event to a course calendar?

Recurring Calendar Events is a course-level feature option. This feature must be enabled at the account level before it can be used for individual courses.

so if you do not see this capability in the Feature Options section of your course settings, please contact your school's Canvas account admin.

[smoushabeck]

@Hi Jason,

Somehow the request/idea got lost in the terminology.  The ask here is for recurring assignments but the implementation of the idea was limited to events only.  This is a badly needed feature that I would hope does actually happen sooner than later.Share Ideas​Canvas Feature Ideas​​​