[Discussions] Multiple Due Dates (checkpoints) for Discussions

[chriswhite]

This idea has been developed and is On Canvas Beta •  How do I access the Canvas beta environment?

For more information, please read through the Canvas Release Notes (2025-01-18) 

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With the way that many schools set up forum discussions and require "check-ins" to the forum throughout the week, it would be great if we could include multiple due dates in the discussion activities. For instance, I have classes that require everyone respond to the prompt by Thursday night and respond to at least 2 peers by the following Sunday. Being able to remind students that they have responses due, especially if we could scatter responses over multiple days, would likely increase participation.

[hensonj]

well, I guess even the HTML for emoji gets stripped out of the jive RCE now. 😠

[jhornbuckle]

Preach.

As a relatively new Canvas user, I'm unclear on the process. This feature was proposed a whopping THREE YEARS ago, and is clearly desired by many users. Programmatically, it shouldn't be overly difficult to create the functionality.

Why a request that's both relatively easy to implement and widely wanted is still languishing after so long is a mystery to me. My best guess is that there aren't a sufficient number of programmers on staff to handle the work load for implementing customer requests.

[lindsapj]

I gave up a while ago.

Patrick Lindsay

Miami University

[Renee_Carney]

hensonj,  @jhornbuckle  &  @lindsapj  

First, I'm so excited that you are all so invested in this thread that a notification would send you traveling back quickly!  I know what that feels like, and I'm sure I'd have done the same.  Sorry it wasn't yet the news you were hoping for.  

James, I do want to make sure and address one comment that you made above

Ideas used to be really helpful since they were submitted, voted on and implemented. Now, even simple changes, that have tons of votes are left to languish for years.

The comment is a little generic, so I want to be sure and give some specific history.  Until 3 years ago all ideas were handled in the Zendesk system.  That first iteration of ideation was the 'wild west' approach.  Many ideas came in, some influenced design and development, but there was not a formal process by which ideas were shared with product.  Three years ago (almost to the date) we launched the Jive community platform, and with that launch came a very intentional and strategic approach of gathering user feedback and sharing it with product in a consumable and useful way.  This new process didn't gameify development, or promise that we'd build all things that the community voted up, but it did/does promise that we will read all ideas and manage a process by which highly voted ideas are retained and move forward to advise product.  The community team provides data to product that shows them the top voted ideas in order of vote, but also thematic data on the features that are impacted by many of the top voted ideas.  In addition, there is demographic detail available for all ideas, allowing us to see the diversity of interest (or if it is a single school).  

So I can see where when the new process was brand new, and there were much fewer ideas submitted, that it may have felt like the process moved faster.  I can assure you that the process now moves at the same pace, if not faster, there are just so many more great ideas out there.

So again, sorry you were disappointed, but I hope this helped clear up some perceptions.

For more information on the development process, and the feature idea process, please check out the following!

• https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-4396-what-is-the-feature-development-process-for-canvas?sr=...‌
• https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-2109-how-does-the-voting-process-work-for-feature-ideas?sr=...‌

[hensonj]

Thank you  @Renee_Carney  for the reply. Yes, I am familiar with how the ideas used to work before Jive.  We moved from another LMS to canvas and I personally was, at the time, incredibly impressed by the speed with which the platform was updated for both bug fixes and user requests.

I think though its clear that there is a serious lack of movement on the platform, for user requested fixes (ideas). This idea is a great example, as is https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1241-all-or-no-points-on-multiple-answer-questions  (in which case I understand the quiz tool was being completely overhauled, but that didn't address the fact that many, many instructors had to hand grade thousands upon thousands of questions for the past three years, while the new tool was being developed)

Taking the previous example further, I personally think that it's clear that it was a serious issue by the fact that a user had to develop an ad in for the LMS to address the issue. 

Don't get me wrong, I really like canvas, but it can be incredibly frustrating to participate in Ideas, since they at least in appearance seem to rarely materialize. 

Further, I understand that you can see where the votes are coming from, and if this is a reference to my pet project of clarifying UI for users in the case of https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/6015-make-preview-the-document-the-default-action-for-linked-d..., it should be noted that some "ideas" are really hard to get traction on, not because they are bad ideas, but because of the makeup of the community that actually votes. 

What I am getting at is this; only 77 on the roughly 280 completed ideas had a score of 100 votes or more,  that's not even 30%. This means that the other 70%+ was either something that a developer already wanted to do, or it was a bug or oversight that needed to be corrected immediately. As a user, when you see that in the 3 years that the new ideas section has been around, more than 70% of the "ideas" marked as "completed" haven't managed to reach even a basic threshold of 100, while in the "radar" ideas 92% HAVE reached that threshold (and I know that the 100 threshold has been removed from any language about how ideas are selected and implemented, likely specifically to avoid dealing with the number of ideas that have easily surpassed that and have been sitting for so long). you tend to get frustrated and on year two perhaps you come back and ask if any progress has been made, and year 3, you give up on "ideas" completely as a way for users to assist in actually making the product better. 

[khuntsman]

OK, but at the top of this very page it says "Idea will be open for vote Wednesday June 3, 2015 through Wednesday September 3, 2015".  If I have one huge pet peeve in life it is INACCURATE INFORMATION.  Any site is only as good as the information you give.  So if the idea is still open for vote, say that.  Posting a date that is nearly 3 years old makes it look like this item has been forgotten.

This is a BIG DEAL ITEM for many schools, including big ones like Penn State World Campus.  I have seen lots of tweaks in the time we have been waiting for this one that I would clearly classify as "nice, not necessary."  This one is necessary.  I have fielded many complaints on it from students and faculty.  I am not sure that the physical number of votes is reflective of the necessity for this upgrade.

I have asked before in this thread, and I will ask it again.  Can we please get some SPECIFIC feedback on where this is at?  I will even make it multiple choice:

1--Someone is actively looking at adding this feature even as we speak

2--There are other features more important to users, so nobody will consider this until there are more "up" votes

3--It is not something that will happen, because nobody owns it

4--It is on some kind of list of "stuff that a developer can look at if they suddenly have some free time"...i.e. see #3 above

If I sound irritated, it is because I am.  Again, mostly because I see so many "nice, but no big deal" tweaks and have received no real information on where this is going.

[vventor]

As stated above by others, this tends to be students' number one complaint about the discussion board. Please make this a priority to fix. 

[pflorenz1]

I vote for multiple days for discussions in Canvas

[matthewthomas]

I'll add my support for this set of features. My MO is to have students post initially by Thursday night, then reply to 2 classmates by Saturday night. That way, we all have a chance to go in Friday and Saturday to reply, knowing that all of the initial posts are/should be there.

I wouldn't necessarily use all of the individual features that Peyton Craighill outlined in his comment here from 8/24/2015, but they all make sense to me.

Some best practices might be useful to this thread. I saw Dallas E Husley's post from 10/10/2016, and I will probably try that. Our Instructional Designers encourage us to set the due date as the date of the initial post (in my case, Thursday), so that students realize that they need to do that. Generally, they get the idea that they are then to post replies by Saturday, but a way to encode that in the course would be immensely helpful.

[plumley]

Yes..I have a 'work around' where I insert an ungraded assignment to remind students that the first of two posts is due.  It confuses some of them....I'd love it if a discussion could have multiple due dates.