[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
rjf227
Community Participant

I don't think the mastery paths solution will solve the complexities of designing Canvas courses for students with disabilities.

ChandlWM
Community Contributor

You could create a module before it that has only 1 assignment in it that is assigned to that student only.  Then in the 2nd module you could make the 1st module completion a requirement to do the 2nd module.  Hey it is a work around, and no one would have access to the 2nd module but the kid who can complete the first one.

Just an idea to help out some person looking for help.

scatia
Community Member

this would be a great feature...

bruce_janz
Community Novice

I would very much like to have this feature. I have requests from students to work ahead, which I would like to let them do, but don't want to open things for everyone in the class. This makes sense especially during a pandemic, when things might not be so predictable and some students might want to work ahead when they can, in case they are faced with things they can't control in the future. Better early than late. 

VincentAdolph
Community Member

As to the Learning at your own pace how is that actually assessed? Serious non gripe question is this totally all brand new like a nation wide social experiment?

rjf227
Community Participant

This functionality would be extremely helpful and will allow us to seamlessly integrate remediated materials into Canvas so that students with disabilities can have an equal experience to their peers and their anonymity will also be preserved.

melissa_queen
Community Member

In Higher education, it is common to give students with documented needs an accommodation that requires an instructor to provide those students access to a Canvas Module earlier than the rest of the class.

Similarly to how Assignments allow instructors to make differentiated dates to access and submit Canvas Assignments, Canvas Modules should allow for instructors to be able to unlock a module with differentiated access dates for students requiring early access.

Without this ability, an instructor has to manually copy the content over to a separate Word document in order to provide early access to the student via email while still keeping the Canvas Module locked until the regular access date. 

melissa_queen
Community Member

I also created a similar feature idea post before finding this post:

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Multiple-quot-Lock-Until-quot-dates-for-Module...

isabelmk
Community Member

I agree that this is a very important feature to allow for individual needs, such as leaves of absence. 

isabelmk
Community Member

In addition, I would like to have the ability to assign an entire module to some students and a different module to others. Right now, I have (quite clunky) workarounds to enable some students to work through a series of assignments, while others work through others. The "default" way Canvas expects us to do this is at the assignment level, a quite time-consuming task, especially if all of the assignments in one module are assigned to one group of students and all those of a different module are assigned to the rest. There has to be a way to program this at the module level.