[Course Settings] Allow Admin to Set Default Settings for courses

Status: Open Submitted by on ‎02-23-2016 09:28 AM
It would be hugely helpful to district-level Canvas Admins to be able to modify and establish default course settings for course shells created for sections assigned to teacher users.

 

For example, if a teacher technology advisory committee, school principal, and/or tech department in the school or district determines that all courses published in Canvas for students and observers have settings that differ from the current defaults, then this requires a manual change to each course by the teacher and/or admin depending upon the district's user permissions.

e.g., setting grading schemes, or students rights to view, attach, etc.

Screen Shot 2016-02-23 at 10.53.02 AM.png

e.g., modifying default course navigation menu items to be viewable to students...

Screen Shot 2016-02-23 at 10.53.50 AM.png

 

I suggest that Canvas develop a feature that would allow an admin to simply set the course settings defaults prior to the creation of courses within subaccounts, manually or via SIS integration.

 

This feature could be available in one or more of the following locations of the Admin navigation menu:

(a) Courses

171597_Screen Shot 2016-02-23 at 11.10.22 AM.pngScreen Shot 2016-02-23 at 11.10.22 AM.png

(b) Add a New Course

171598_Screen Shot 2016-02-23 at 11.10.35 AM.pngScreen Shot 2016-02-23 at 11.10.35 AM.png

(c) Settings

171629_Screen Shot 2016-02-23 at 11.11.56 AM.pngScreen Shot 2016-02-23 at 11.11.56 AM.png

(d) Subaccounts

171631_Screen Shot 2016-02-23 at 11.27.37 AM.pngScreen Shot 2016-02-23 at 11.27.37 AM.png

71 Comments
vrs07nl
Community Contributor
‎04-27-2016 05:05 AM

We have issues with collaborations that use google docs/ sites etc as perceived as insecure by our external clients as well as legal teams

We now use Campus Pack

kmeeusen
Community Champion
‎04-27-2016 07:57 AM

Thank you vrs07nl​

mmoore1
Community Contributor
‎07-11-2016 09:56 AM

The Ventura County Community Colleges District would also like this.

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team
‎08-05-2016 09:46 AM

This is a valuable and important idea, for all of the use cases that you presented!  Thank you for taking the time to submit this idea and provide such great detail.  While we would love to build this, it is not something that we see in our roadmap for the next 6-12 months.  Please continue to converse on this thread and be sure to follow it to receive updates as they come available.  We are going to set this idea in holding (archive) for now.

rsaunders
Community Explorer
‎08-05-2016 09:52 AM

Mistake. Should be a priority.

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On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 9:46 AM, rcarney@instructure.com <

tdarrow
Community Contributor
‎08-05-2016 12:16 PM

This particular idea would have saved me several hours of course editing. For example, I was commissioned with getting nearly 60 courses' navigation menus to all look the same. To do this took several hours... If this feature is implemented, I can see nearly every institution actively using it to provide consistent service to their students. Totally would vote for this idea!

joseph_allen
Community Champion
‎08-10-2016 09:27 AM

 @tdarrow  and  @rsaunders 

I completely agree with you guys that this should be functionality that exists in Canvas.  I will be launching close to 20K courses in the next 2 weeks as our K12 district gears up for the 2016/17 year.  I have solved this problem by running a script that sets all the courses the way that I need to have them, e.g. shut off grade distribution dashboard, shut off comments on announcements, etc.   If you are interested, I'm happy to share that script with you and you can modify to suit your own needs.  I tend to run this once at the beginning of the year, but we had a previous script that I ran daily to ensure the settings stayed as we desired them.

tdarrow
Community Contributor
‎08-10-2016 11:50 AM

Hi  @joseph_allen ​,

I would love to have that script! Could you send it to me at tdarrow@masters.edu?

millerjm
Community Champion
‎08-11-2016 07:08 AM

 @joseph_allen ​, can you please share your script with me?  Smiley Happy  thank you!

ewerhardt
Community Member
‎09-13-2016 01:52 PM

In the past, we've worked with faculty to come up with the ideal course default template with our other LMS's, but Canvas does not allow us to do much with course setting defaults.  We have to contact our account manager to request that one of the nav items be set to hidden, or try to add some code to the app config to do it.  (Yet another customization to which to keep track.  Meh. )  Anywhoo, please give the control of this back to the admins.  As more and more apps get added, that nav list can get long.  When they're added, we have to inform faculty that they'll "need to hide it if not using it."  Again, meh...  Smiley Wink