Organize Assignment Page into Grading Periods

[keyaiko]

  This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

  Idea open for vote Wed. November 4, 2015 - Wed. February 3, 2016  Learn more about voting...

Have a drop-down menu in the assignments page where teachers can filter the assignments shown by grading period.

For teachers with many assignments, the assignment page can get cluttered very quickly. I understand this is a very specific request, but for those schools that use grading periods, the gradebook is already organized by grading period. I think it would make sense to have the assignment page organized in the same way, with each grading period listed in a drop-down menu as well as an "All grading periods" option for those who want to see all assignments in one page.

  Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the Canvas Production Release Notes (2016-01-09)

Assignments

Filter by Grading Period

[wendy_matthews]

You can do this. Just click on Totals in the corner; it will give you the option to move it to the front.

[jjordan1]

Thank you to all the folks from hcpss.org for the votes on this feature   I made a quick mockup, hopefully this will be in the pipeline sometime soon (before 3rd quarter would be greatttt if possible - our 2 pennies):

[swright]

This would be especially helpful in the students' view as well.  They are easily overwhelmed by seeing assignments from other marking periods.

[sarah_pappalard]

Speaking as a K-12 teacher using Canvas, this would be extremely helpful for teachers, parents, and students when looking at the assignments.  Having them all visible throughout the year becomes cumbersome all too quickly, and is more than a headache.  Fixing this problem sooner than later would be wonderful! 

[joseph_allen]

Sarah, our first experience with the overwhelming assignments was when we thought they would all display in the gradebook for a whole year.  That appears to be fixed by the implementation of grading periods, but I have heard from dozens of teachers that the assignments page needs a similar filter so that page remains usable.  I think Canvas was originally catering to Higher Ed which may not be dealing with hundreds of assignments over the course of the year like K12.

[sarah_pappalard]

Hi Joe! I fully understand that Canvas is used to catering to higher education (not K-12), but not having the ability to filter assignments by grading period is a HUGE logistics oversight on the part of both HCPSS and Canvas. (Yes, I fully understand that having the ability to have the gradebook filtered by grading period is nothing short of a miracle in and of itself.) Both HCPSS and Canvas need to make this a top priority for their to-do list of improvements. I have had almost every teacher in our building come to myself or another POC and complain/question the logic with this issue. I am fully aware that it is not an easy fix, but it should be a highly prioritized issue to solve, please. Perhaps if Canvas had been made more aware of the differences between higher ed and K-12 ed in the first place, some of these problems could have been avoided from the start.

Have a happy Thanksgiving next week, and perhaps there will be some sort of holiday miracle where Canvas is able to fix this sooner than later.

Sarah

Sarah Pappalardo

Grade 8 Science Teacher & Science Team Leader

GFP Masters Student - Miami University

Dunloggin Middle School - Ellicott City, MD

"The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it." - Robert Swan

www.mspappalardoscience.com<http://www.mspappalardoscience.com>;

www.hcpss.org/connect<http://www.hcpss.org/connect>;

Communication - Futuristic - Woo - Harmony - Intellection

[jjordan1]

 @scottdennis ​ if this gets implemented in the Teacher view, can we expect it also for the Student view ( I think we are talking about the same view for all )?  They both can benefit from this feature.  Do we have any forecast from the product manager if this will make a sprint anytime soon ( possibly before a 3rd quarter starts or 2nd trimester ends )?  This would provide the end user with parity to the timeframe they see in the gradebook and is a really good feature request for K-12s.  Thank you for anything you can share back.

[scottdennis]

Hi  @jjordan1 ​,

If we get this built, I'd be very surprised if student view differed substantially from instructor view as that would be a deviation from a main Canvas design strategy.  I also don't have any info on potential timeline, unfortunately but will share anything I do learn.

[jjordan1]

Thank you Scott, I think we are talking about the same view as well.  This is good, as a single feature improvement here will have a positive effect on multiple end users (similar to when the gradebook view was improved to reflect multiple grading periods).  In some other features, we had project managers chime in that they were working on things so hopefully we will get something from them soon.

[jsparks]

We are looking at some updates to assignments, but this is not one of them just yet.  We will look into this functionality for a future update after conferring with my colleagues on the product and user experience teams.  There are a variety of ways to do this and we want to do it well.