Last name, first name as separate cells

[lkiesling]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

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I've just used my exported gradebook to determine the grade distribution for a 150-student class. To determine the distribution I sorted the data in order from highest to lowest final score, and then went back to alphabetize the data so I could submit the grades ... only to realize that the student names are (first name last name) in the same cell. This means I have to alphabetize *manually*.

This is terrible database design. Why isn't the last name in as a separate cell to enable automatic alphabetizing? Is there a workaround in the short run? Not that it will help me today as I enter my grades, but ... And the ability in Canvas to search on a student name is a poor substitute for sensible database design.

[blove]

I like to download grades, manipulate them, and sort them in different ways (by an average of exams scores, for example), but then I'd like to sort by last name.  I can't do that with the names in one column.  This seems like a no-brainer feature.  C'mon, canvas.

[marianna_pinter]

I had the "pleasure" to separate 270+ students' first and last names this semester manually . . . it's Stone Age.

[brett_glynn_dal]

The University of Melbourne is currently considering adding Fist Name and Last Name as customer grade book columns to alleviate this issue for instructors when exporting, however, this takes up screen real-estate for Instructors and is not sortable in the Gradebook.  This is ALSO partly being done because you can ONLY sort in the grade book by sortable name and not first name or SIS_ID (which is student number in our case).

Either way while this is not a trivial change  as it has a lot of touch points, its probably one that is needed to avoid a lot of workarounds by users.

[laszewski]

I find it disappointing that such an important feature is in voting since 2015. This is very disappointing. So more than 250 people wait for this feature. What do universities have to do so this gets added. Apparently voting is useless ...

[laszewski]

why cannot a second option be added for the export, e.g one that is as-is and one that separates the firtsname and lastname. This should be trivial to implement and does not cause any backward compatibility issues

[marianna_pinter]

Apparently canvas does not listen these forums. And universities are likely bound by contracts, which are comfortable to canvas.

[brett_glynn_dal]

The real issue here is the seperate fields would need to be added to the system, then institutions would need to populate the data as the current situation the first name and last name are all in a single field. Once that has been done and people have had time to adjust other systems then some time down the track the old fields removed.  

This is actually a pretty big change as there are a lot of touch point (pretty much anywhere you see the students name) would need to be updated in the code.  Its painful and I think it need to get fixed but its not trivial.

[marianna_pinter]

In the case of my institution, the fields seem separated already; canvas just should keep them as is. It's a pretty basic feature, which should have been provided without asking for it since 2015

[laszewski]

My university asked me to use this forum to add a request for this. They had no response other than that and have us manipulate excel spreadsheets which as you see from this threat is something CANVAS should do and not us, especially as I have to do this procedure multiple times throughout the semester.

It looks to me like that the CANVAS support provided to universities seems poor if an obvious enhancement such as this can easily be automated, according to our CANVAS team, even without modification to the core database. E.g. if an excel spreadsheet is exportable, than why is canvas not doing the firstname lastneme separation from the spreadsheet if we press another option.

Also, why would our university not have the ability to already have this as you seem to think you have it since 2015 . and others in the thread including myself do not. 

[laszewski]

What I am proposing is not to change this everywhere, but just fix it in the spreadsheet. According to our university CANVAS team this can be done easily. E.g. while manipulating the spreadsheet. So why not have two options 

* export grades as currently

* export grades while adding a little program that takes the spreadsheet and prior to presenting it to the user separate firstname from lastname