[Assignments] "Assign to" at Assignment Group level

[bsr]

Problem statement:

Problem: Currently, assignments have to be assigned to student sets (e.g., everyone, section, groups, etc.) individually. When a course is imported from the previous year into the current year's shell, all of those settings are lost, and each individual assignment must be re-edited to assign it to the appropriate sections. This is tedious and extremely time-consuming. Case use: I have a shell that combines two versions of a course, one with a lab and one online-only with no lab. I combine them so that the online students can participate in discussion assignments with the lab course students. However, all of the lab assignments need to be assigned only to the lab course students. There are 12 lab exercises, 12 lab quizzes, 4 project check-ins, a lab report, a lab exam, and two peer-evaluations that all have to be assigned only to those in the lab version, and every year, the assignments lose those settings when imported from the previous shell, necessitating over 30 adjustments (open assignment, scroll down, enter prompt, select course, save, return, scroll back down, repeat...). Moreover, all courses and sections don't populate in the "assign to" drop-down menu, even after selecting the same one over and over, so I have to type in the course number in the "assign to" window every single time. An option to assign an entire assignment group to a course or section would save a tremendous amount of time, and greatly reduce errors!

Proposed solution:

Include an "assign to" function within the assignment group editing options, allowing all assignments within the group to be simultaneously assigned to a specified group with a single user action. Why: 1. Would save a lot of time and work in course set-up. 2. Would reduce errors in course set-up (it is easy to miss a few assignments when going through a very long list, especially since there is no "next" option, and no way to return to the same point in the page after editing an assignment). 3. Would reduce errors in later adjustments (if instructors or TAs add make-up or bonus assignments during the semester, a categorical section assignment would keep the additions from inadvertently messing up the other sections' grades; we have this problem a lot with TAs who don't think to change the "assign to" when adding something to a category, and being in a hurricane-prone state, we ALWAYS have make-ups and adjustments during the semester).

User role(s):

instructor

[bsr]

Just adding on to my "why": in addition to the >30 assignments that I need to assign only to students in one version of the course (plus another half dozen that need to be assigned only to the other version), my institution decided to split my in-person lab course into two different sections: students who are stationed at off-campus locations are now placed in a different section, even though they commute to the main campus for this class. It turns out that assigning by the course number doesn't work, and so for each of those >30 assignments, I have to assign two separate sections, further increasing the tedium factor. An option to assign everything within an assignment group to one slice or another of the class would really help to buffer the "dissecting from above" problem, too! 

[SamGarza1]

Hi @bsr, I wanted to check in and see if one of our recent releases has improved your overall experience at all. Module and Assignment Differentiation was released in July and allows for individuals and sections to be assigned to a module. I've linked the release notes that give an overview. 

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Releases/Canvas-Release-Notes-2024-07-20/ta-p/606797#toc-h... 

[bsr]

Hi, @SamGarza1,

I just looked through the release notes, and well, maybe sort of but, ... no, not really. 

I already use modules to collect things into units. The units are topical and chronological, which is generally how I think of the term "module": a unit of material, containing all of the videos, readings, and assignments for that week/topic. Assignment groups, on the other hand, are neither topical nor chronological: they describe assignment types, where one assignment type spans the entire semester. For example, every module might have a discussion assignment, two quizzes, and an exam. In Assignment groups, you can set the group attributes so that the discussion assignments together account for 10% of the grade, the quizzes 20%, and the exams 70% (or what have you). Assignment groups is also where I would like to be able to select the course section for the group. For example:

Assignment groups assigned to Lab course: In-person exams, 60%; Discussions, 10%; Lab assignments, 30%.
Assignment groups assigned to Online course: Online exams, 80%, Discussions, 10%, Quizzes, 10%. 

It doesn't really make sense to make modules out of assignment types. EVERY module has an exam. EVERY module has a discussion. To use the "assign module" feature to manage lab assignments, would mean ... pulling the assignments out of the modules, I guess? Then what is the point of the modules? They are no longer topical or chronological; they are just assignment types duplicated under a term that doesn't mean "assignment type." People have some idea of what a module means, and "all laboratory assignments across the entire course" doesn't really fit. It seems like it would get very confusing!