[Modules] Module Progress Bar (amended)

[ProfessorBeyrer]

 

Amended after comments and questions from  @James ‌.

TL;DR

Instructors should be able to add a module progress bar
Amendment: Instructors should be able to add a module progress bar that includes the module title.

Why it's needed

Students benefit from web pages that are shorter rather than longer, and as a consequence Modules can have many links within. In one of my courses there are anywhere from 8 to 20 items in each of 12 modules. That's a lot of clicking Next and Previous for my students! Each begins with an overview and ends with a summary, but there is no progress report within each module unless I add one on each page. It would be great if one could be there automatically so when I reorder items or add or remove things the progress bar is updated without me needing to make edits there.

Amendment: While students are navigating through a module, the title of the module does not appear on the page with the exception of external links. For those module items it appears in the breadcrumbs, but the breadcrumbs for other module item include the name of the tool instead (Pages, Discussions, Quizzes, etc.). Since each module has an anchor link on the Modules page, it would also be great if the title of the module, hyperlinked to that module's anchor on the Modules page, appeared as part of the progress bar.

How it will work

Instructors will have the option to add an automatically generated progress bar at the bottom of each page that is part of a module, between the Previous and Next buttons. The option for a progress bar will be module by module, and it will appear on every published item within that module. (That's a bonus way to communicate the item's published status to instructors!) 

Amendment: The progress bar will include the title of the module hyperlinked to the module's anchor on the Modules page. 

The progress bar will show the count of published items within the module and the number of the current item (e.g., 1 out of 12, 2 out of 12, etc.). It might look like the heart rate tracker on my favorite elliptical trainer at my gym:

I propose numbers instead of words, but it might be neat if it ended with "PEAK LEARNING." :smileycool:

How this benefits students

Students benefit from knowing where they are within a module. This helps them plan their time on task, especially for those modules that are structured consistently. It is good for them to know how many times they have to select that Next link before they achieve peak learning.

Amendment: And as awesome as our module titles are, our students might forget which module they are in. Including the module title as part of the progress tracker will help them stay aware of their surroundings.

[ProfessorBeyrer]

James, you are amazing and absolutely correct about the language. I thought about including the module title in that sample text (perhaps "[Module Title] item no. X out of Y") except that the title might be too long to include. After reading your message about the potential for missed meaning and remembering that the module title appears nowhere on the page (except for external links), I decided to amend my idea to add the module title linked to its anchor on the Modules page. 

Your comments helped make a better idea!

[James]

I think and ellipses (CSS overflow) could be used to handle the long modules names. I would put the module name last, that way they can still see the counts if it gets cut off.

Perhaps one of these?

• Item 13 out of 15 in module: Chapter 5 Geometric Approach to Linear Programming
• Item 13 out of 15 in the Chapter 5 Geometric Approach to Linear Programming module
• Item 13 out of 15 in Chapter 5 Geometric Approach to Linear Programming
• Item 13 out of 15 in module

The last one is a throwback to your original idea, just so people could see how it would look without the name there.

I'm also thinking that the name of the module should link to the module. The module_id is contained in the API response, so it could be formed rather easily.

I wouldn't add that to the feature request, though. Canvas asks us not to get overly prescriptive in the ideas. I'm just doing more of my thinking out loud.

Hopefully there will be more thinking out loud, I've got all my finals made up, there's just one more day of classes before finals start, and I'm taking the summer off teaching for the first time since starting teaching. I have other duties besides teaching to work on, but I feel much lighter than I have in a while.

[tdwightminister]

Yeeeeees!!!!!

[timothy_maw]

This would be fantastic for us as we are a competency-based institution. Making it so students can see exactly where they are at in a module would really help them to track their progress.

[ehouswor]

The administration here has been offering very glossy online "courses" - career planning for undergraduates (good, I took part of it and it told me to be what I am and what I love being) and teaching improvement courses for faculty (not so good - regions of a Venn diagram "interject.") But those courses have lovely progress bars. The bars are images that are created specifically for the modules/pages in the course and inserted as appropriate in each page. I have been wondering whether it would be worth it to spend the time creating that eye candy for my online course and ran across the idea on this page when I was searching about ways to do it in Canvas. It would be lovely if Canvas just did it in a reasonable fashion. 

[dominiquel]

Oh yes, that would be awesome! Our students used to have a progress bar for each course they were enrolled to - visible on the dashboard, back in Moodle. They are missing it terribly!

It's a great way to see how much more they've got to do. It would even be awesome to have a timer till the end of the term to show them exactly how much they've got left until a specific date. 

[GideonWilliams]

Agree, the Moodle progress bar was an awesome feature. Multi functional too.

[mhouser20]

I have a suggestion. One thing that frustrates me about Canvas modules, once I'm working in the module, is not knowing how much I have left to complete it. I suggest putting page numbers in a module (1 of 5, for example) so that students can see how many parts they have accomplished and what they have left in a module.

[jmohr1]

With the transition to online learning, we're using modules A LOT more than before. This is resulting in a very clunky Canvas experience and difficulty organizing stuff (I have seen Idea Conversations for better page and module management, but this request touches on a third feature I would like to see).

We use modules to organize labs, lectures, and studios in their own modules each week. Some modules can get very long and become tedious to navigate, since you can only use the "Next" and "Previous" buttons to navigate the modules. So if you want to go back to a specific page within a module, you either need to load many pages or go back to the modules page and locate the page you want. It would be super convenient to have a right-hand navigation bar always visible that organizes and structures the module (with the indents as it appears on the module page). That way students can jump around the module a little more easily and check their overall progress.

[mrwnphs2]

Agree with @jmohr1