Copy an Assignment

[jthoms]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

  Idea will be open for vote Wed. July 1, 2015 - Wed. October 7, 2015  Learn more about voting...

A good instructional design practice is to have a predictable module structure for students to follow throughout a course. Assignments often have consistent options and text (ie: honor code statements) throughout a course.

Currently copying requires creating a new assignment, and copying content for each item. By adding a “copy” option to the options gear, the effort to build a course will be greatly reduced. If this triggered a dialogue to state how many copies to make, it would be very simple to quickly build out a course structure.

Please help to flesh out this idea by discussing your particular use case in the comments.

Edit: taking quizzes out of this request -- please vote and comment at Duplicate Quizzes

Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the Canvas Production Release Notes (2017-07-15) 

[mpf169]

Dear Stefanie,

I second Robin & Marshall. I would add two things:

1) Users should be able to choose to make edits to one or all instances of

an assignment. I imagine it being similar to when you create an event in

Google Calendar. You have the option to make it a repeating event (but in

this case it would be a repeating assignment). Then, also like repeating

events in Google Calendar, once you have created all of the instances of

the assignment, you would also have the functionality to edit *just one of

them* or apply edits to all of them or *select which instances to apply

edits to*.

1) All of this functionality should also be available within the rubrics

tool.

Thanks!

-Meredith

On Mon, Oct 10, 2016 at 7:48 AM, rmiller@harding.edu <instructure@jiveon.com

[mabrams]

Thanks Robin and Meredith.  I knew I couldn't be the only one!

Stefanie, I checked the link on adjusting dates, but there doesn't seem to be a info about adjusting times.  Without that, copying a course is of limited value.  I have explained other drawbacks of copying a course in my original post.

A more general solution would be to allow us to specify a list of dates and times and a list of parameters to change, and to use these to create a large number of assignments at once.  Even if there were nothing to adjust but dates and times that would not allow me to copy between a Monday/Wednesday/Friday course and a Tuesday/Thursday course very easily.

[mabrams]

The Canvancement userscripts tool looks very useful.  This is the first time that anyone has mentioned it.  If I can use it without any special permissions or rights in my university's Canvas system, it might be what I need.  I still think there ought to be an easier tool.   Not everyone will be willing to do scripting.

[Stef_retired]

 @mabrams ​, regarding Canvancement, you might (as I do) enjoy following  @James ​ in the Canvas Community. He writes a lot of handy scripts that are easily implemented at the end-user level by using the Greasemonkey (Firefox) and Tampermonkey (Chrome) browser extensions to run them.

[mabrams]

Thanks Stefanie--useful suggestion, but following people in Canvas is not for me.  (Finding particular solutions, yes.)  Too many other things I follow in the rest of my life.

[Renee_Carney]

  Idea is currently in Product Radar Learn more about this stage...

[ggongwer]

Very well put. A BASIC function. I.e., something they should have thought of from the very beginning.

[Stef_retired]

For anyone interested in this topic, be sure to RSVP to the CanvasLIVE event Adjust all assignment due dates on one page, which is coming up this Friday, January 13, 2017. RSVP “yes” if you will be there--and if you’re interested, but your schedule doesn’t allow you to attend in real time, RSVP "no" or "maybe" to receive all event updates. Your RSVP ensures that you will receive a notification should the event be cancelled or changed.

[mabrams]

It would help if emails of this kind explained what a Canvas Live event is. (I can guess, but why guess?)

It would also help if somewhere easily findable there were a description of the “adjust all assignments …” proposal. Again, I can guess about what this means, but I’d rather have more info. It sounds wonderful from my point of view, but since I’m not entirely sure, I’m not sure whether it’s wonderful or not!

Finally, I understand that having an online discussion can be valuable to you as a way of sorting through ideas, but I think it’s important that you don’t expect all or most people interested in a change to participate in events of this kind. (I have repeatedly felt that Canvas wants me to spend way too much time on improving Canvas, rather than on improving my teaching and research. I repeatedly worry that if I don’t spend more time interacting with your online forums, etc., that my concerns about Canvas features won’t get heard. I’ve been told that online participation is not the only thing that you think about in developing changes, but I still have the feeling that you depend on user participation to determine your decisions about what to change about Canvas. That’s not a good way to serve customers--with a product that’s designed to save them time! It conflicts with obvious statistical sampling principles.)

Marshall Abrams, Associate Professor

Department of Philosophy, University of Alabama at Birmingham

http://http://members.logical.net/~marshall

Email: mabrams@uab.edu<mailto:mabrams@uab.edu>; Phone: (205) 996-7483; Fax: (205) 975-6610

Mail: HB 414A, 900 13th Street South, Birmingham, AL 35294-1260; Office: HB 418

[Stef_retired]

 @mabrams , both links are clickable. If you're interested, you can click on the  CanvasLIVE​ link to read a thorough description of what a CanvasLIVE event is. The event description (which you can also click on to learn more) explains that the event will be a quick demo of  @James ​'s Adjust All Assignment Dates on One Page​ Canvancement, and the link to that script is also contained in the event description itself.

In other words, you don't have to guess, as the information is all there. However, I see that you are receiving your notifications from the Community through email. When you received your notification, were the links no longer "active"?