Option to Hide Inactive Students from Gradebook

[awilliams]

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  Idea open for vote Wed. February 3, 2016 - Wed. May 4, 2016  Learn more about voting...

So we implemented some changes to our process for handling dropped students based on the new Inactive enrollment status for withdrawn students feature. This is going to be a great improvement when it comes to faculty access of dropped students activity in a course (usually for financial aid or grade dispute reasons). However, one issue we've run into is that the inactive students are still showing up in the gradebook. I understand this is intended functionality and the rationale behind it, however, our faculty do need a way to hide those students from their gradebook.

What I would like to propose is something similar to how the "Show Concluded Enrollments" toggle works in the gradebook settings. I'm not too particular on whether the default should be "hide" and the toggle should "show" or vice versa but having the option to filter them out would be a huge help.

Edit 1/29/2016:

I would want this toggle to be permanent, rather than session-limited the way "Show Concluded" is. This way the setting lasts until it's toggled back off, rather than having to be re-toggled on each new session.

  Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the Canvas Production Release Notes (2016-04-23)

[awilliams]

Just added a slight addendum to the idea:

Edit 1/29/2016:

I would want this toggle to be permanent, rather than session-limited the way "Show Concluded" is. This way the setting lasts until it's toggled back off, rather than having to be re-toggled on each new session.

[jordan]

This idea has moved to the next stage and will be open for voting among the Canvas Community, from Wed. February 3, 2016 - Wed. May 4, 2016.

Check out this doc for additional details about how the voting process works!

[kmeeusen]

I support this idea, Adam.

In larger classes, still displaying an inactive student name in the gradebook can create additional and useless work for faculty. For example; I like to post zeros for students who did not submit work by the due date - this helps to avoid the confusion created by the "Treat ungraded items as zero" functionality in Canvas. In a larger class, I cannot easily remember who is inactive and who isn't, so I end up going through the entire list of students to make sure I have graded everybody - this is a waste of time if some of the everybody's really didn't need to be graded.

I will add that I would like to see this extend to SpeedGrader too, since that is where I primarily submit grades from.

KLM

[594948]

This is a great option, however the gradebook is an issue.  It would be best to default that the gradebook only shows ACTIVE students, with the option to toggle to show inactive.  For our situation, the majority of the users are only interested in Active students, while the administrators need to see inactive students on a case by case basis.

[malverez]

I agree with Felicia.  This option is great, or a great alternate would be to just not show them in the first place unless that option is selected.  It does seem more intuitive for the default to show active students and with the option to show inactive ones, rather than the default to show all students with the option to show just active ones.

[awilliams]

I concur but at this point I'll take anything :smileysilly:

[kristin_bayless]

This is an update on my previous posting.  We decided to conclude students when they drop a course and then 2 weeks later to inactivate them.  The concluded status will allow them to view grades, assignments, etc. for a short time until they receive a withdrawal grade.  The inactive status will remove the course from view in the event they transfer to the same course at a different school or delay taking the course for a term.  That way they won't see content posted after they drop.

The way Canvas handles it is pretty crazy when both statuses are being used.  In People, the concluded students are in the View Previous Enrollments, but Inactive are still in the course list (with an inactive icon).  Both of these should show in the previous enrollments area.

In the gradebook, the Show Concluded Enrollments is a toggle which always will show one group or the other.  There needs to be a way of hiding both at the same time.  This is the biggest teacher complaint.  They would also like the names for both statuses to be differentiated from the enrolled students in some way when toggled on in the gradebook (as our SIS does with changing the name's font to a lighter gray).

We like our decision of how to handle this, and like the availability of the inactive status.  Now Instructure just needs to catch up on how the system handles these students.

[bacherts]

With Saturday's most recent update it appears that inactive users are now listed in SpeedGrader which makes this issue even more troublesome.  I would like the ability to hide inactive students throughout the course unless we want to turn it on to be able to see grades prior to status change, attendance records, or SpeedGrader submissions.

Thanks, Sam

[awilliams]

Yep, got some calls about this today as well. ​*fingers crossed we see a fix soon*

[tmd194]

I really think that when updating "status" in Canvas that all areas should be considered. When updating how "inactive" status works, grade book, speedgrader, people page, groups, etc. should all be taken into consideration. It seems as if lately when a status is updated, everything else either breaks or fails to follow the same logic.