Pagination for Courses List (Admin)

[Nicholas_Farha]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

Canvas should paginate the course list in the admin console. To say "There are too many courses to show . . . Please use the finder" can be and often is useless. Why not a "Next-->" button? What if I am not looking for a specific course e.g what if I want to count all of the xyz courses? What if I want to do screen captures to get an alphabetical list of the courses for a term? The way it is set up now is a really poor design.

Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-14284-canvas-production-release-notes-2018-03-10 .

[kristin_bayless]

It's amazing how often a teacher will give me the name of their course, when the actual title turns out to be totally different.  The ability to page  through the course list would have helped with this piece of detective work.

[csalazar]

After talking with a developer, I'm curious to hear what the community thinks about one potential solution to this problem. The main course list currently displays useful information in a way that is not an efficient use of the space.

I think it would be more useful to have a table view with only the most important course information (Course Name, Course Code, Teacher Name, and Number of Students) visible. The columns would be sortable, but users would not be able to move or re-size the columns. The view would also probably default to only showing a certain number of classes for the current term with the option to select another term or change the filter. We would still have a way to search for a course or a user on the page.

Would you miss any of the information that would be excluded in the new view (like SIS ID Number or school name)? Also, how important are the quick links to the Settings, Statistics, and Homepage in the current view?

Thank you for your input!

[asatkins]

For our school the most important pieces of information are name, teacher name, number of students and SIS ID. Course name/code doesn't get you very far when an SIS is auto populating those fields based on a master course catalogue, so all versions of Biology would have the same name/code but a unique SIS ID.

I think the link to homepage is unnecessary, clicking the name of the course gets you the same place. We do use settings, but I think we'd be willing to give that up in exchange for a better interface.

There's my two cents, for what it's worth.

Also, did we play Avalon together at Game Night?

[csalazar]

Yes we did Amanda. I was great meeting you at InstructureCon, and thank you for the feedback!

[Chris_Hofer]

I think it's valuable to be able to see the course title, the SIS ID (which contains our six-digit course number and five-digit CRN), and the name of the instructor.  If this can be displayed in a table view like you are suggesting, that would be great!  As an example, the screen shot I've provided here is from our previous LMS that we moved from just over a year ago, and as an Admin, I could see the course number and course name only.

[canvas_admin]

I wouldn't miss the SIS information or the Homepage link.    I do like the ability to go to Settings/Statistics immediately, but that is just a couple of extra clicks. I think the benefits would outweigh the downside of losing a few course links.

[stephensda]

Amen! I am baffled by the current listing "options" for admins.

[kona]

Deactivated user, I'm slightly confused by your suggestion because I'm not sure how it will help if, "The view would also probably default to only showing a certain number of classes for the current term with the option to select another term or change the filter." The information that comes up for the courses isn't that problematic to me (but yes, could be better). The issue is that I can't get a list of ALL my courses for a specific search, Ex: Fall 2015 or all PSYCH 110 courses. Maybe I'm missing something, but how does what you suggest help with the original problem? Would this show more of our courses (but still not all of them)?

[csalazar]

Hello  @kona ​,

I didn't make it explicit in my previous comment, but there would also be a next button to be able to view the next group of records, so that you could see as many records as you would like.

[kona]

THANK YOU for the clarification Deactivated user​! That makes a lot more sense and I would definitely be on board with this!!

For me what we really need to see is Course name, SIS ID, teacher (or teachers), and number of students. Yes, I occasionally use the "Settings" link to go straight to settings, but it's not that important. Otherwise I don't ever use Statistics or Homepage.