[Modules] Hiding and Viewing Modules for Individual Sections

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas LMS

Parts of this have been mentioned in previous requests (Modules within Modules and others) and I wonder if this is more to do with the needs of K12 than beyond?

 

We run a model based on UK curriculum which may be different to other school models (10+ subjects in a timetable, classes selected by ability, external examinations in 2/3 year groups, different content taught depending on the class etc). Having begun our implementation of Canvas the last thing we wished to do is create individual courses for each class and teacher in a subject. With up to 9 classes in a subject this would be an administrative nightmare and would go against much of what I believe a VLE is for - forward facing, collaborative, personalised, sharing of resources etc.

 

The reality is at school level it is very very difficult to create a core course that is truly personalised without some form of conditions/restrictions especially as "content is king". We add our classes as separate sections which enables assignments to be posted to individual classes. We would dearly like Canvas to go further and enable this option for other content such as pages/links etc.

 

The idea being suggested though is for teachers to be able to hide/view modules for individual sections

 

This would allow content (pages, links etc) to be viewed by individual sections. It would give teachers and students the best of both worlds. Modules could be 'turned on' for all sections or individual sections. It would allow you to create differentiated blocks of content/resources eg for those students who are perhaps sitting the 'Higher Level' exam. It would also allow us to support subjects where they have banded/set ability groups. It would also support subjects where topics are done on rotation due to resourcing. It would also reduce the risk of common core subjects such as Maths/Science developing vast 'silos' of resources/modules and making navigation harder than it should be. Would it also be less messy than Conditional activities?

 

I know that some suggestions have talked about creating extra courses but with the majority of our students having up to 15 courses to manage, the last thing I wish to see is doubling up courses and reducing engagement.

 

I think this is more of a K12 issue and it would be nice to see a little bit of love sent their way...

 

UPDATE: APRIL 2018

I was at the Dutch Users Group consortium on Friday. This consortium represents a sizeable and growing number of universities, colleges and schools within the Netherlands. As a group, we identified a number of ideas we wished to take forward and the one above emerged as a clear favourite (without any prompting from me!)

 

This is now an idea that has support across multiple educational organisations and the benefits of this idea are seen as hugely positive and wide ranging.

 

As the last comment on this was 16 months ago and 2 years since the idea was published, it would be nice to know what progress, if any, has been made here.

185 Comments
jacob5
Community Member

HIGHLY useful, particularly during remote learning

mckeppner
Community Novice

To have a way of students who enter class late as transfers to bypass the previously required and tasks that are to be completed sequentially

dalia_aizi
Community Novice

I'm a Canvas admin and have been asked multiple times to create sections for specific courses. These courses in question are used as communities, which means that we have first, second and third year students in the same course. To be able to navigate this, we've created sections for each year. This works great for any appointments we'd like to create for, e.g, first year students or if we'd like to make any announcements for a specific year. However, this does not extend to the module page. It would be great to be able to create a module and, in addition to the ability to lock the module and add prerequisites, we're also able to ensure that only certain sections are able to see and access that specific module and its material.

 

lsmith129
Community Participant

Please consider this! I have one student who has been unable to unlock a module through no fault of his own - the only way around it (says Canvas) is to unlock it for EVERYONE which totally defeats the purpose of setting up the module progressions in the first place. 

ellen_peters
Community Participant

I can't believe that such an important and basic feature still has not been implemented yet. Very disappointing. It also seems that the votes from the previous community have not been translated into the new star-rating. This idea had much more votes than the 10 ratings I currently see.

nicoletta_rata
Community Member

This is such a basic requirement of any LMS, and well overdue in Canvas. Please, please consider development of this feature as a priority! We have been waiting many years for this product to 'grow-up' feature-wise and this one feature is a major obstacle to enabling flexibility and responsiveness for teachers and students.

michelle_souvan
Community Participant

This would be such a helpful for differentiating for our special education learners

stob
Community Member

I agree with the previous posts in that this feature would be so very useful.  Please consider adding the ability to release modules to specific sections within a Canvas course.  Thank you!

rjf227
Community Participant

This is a much-needed feature to address some of our accessibility concerns and needs. We want to be able to provide content to our students (including blind students) at their point of need in a way that's not visible to the other students in the class. The lack of this functionality within Canvas compromises our ability to create an equitable learning design to meet the teaching and learning needs of students with special needs. Currently, we have to provide differentiated student content outside of the LMS to preserve anonymity, creating a scavenger hunt of sorts for the student (seeing we can't provide these materials in an organized way to individual students within the LMS). Because accessibility issues can lead to litigation, we would be incredibly relieved to see this functionality added to Canvas.

hlovett
Community Participant

This feature is very needed for accommodations. We get requests for this kind of feature regularly. I would like to see it considered again.