Parental observation in canvas complicated with three children!

[trberta]

  This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

  Idea will be open for vote Wed. September 2, 2015 - Wed. December 2, 2015  Learn more about voting...

We have three children at the same high school.  We have registered as Canvas observers, and added all three children to our watch list. With 8 class periods, that's 24 potential classes to watch, and they appear to be listed ALPHABETICALLY, without an obvious way to filter by student, or clearly identify which student is taking which class.

Our three children have very different learning styles and levels of achievement, which demand three very different levels of observation.  Our temporary workaround will be very "clunky" (an old technical term meaning not user-friendly).  We are going to have to set up three separate parental accounts, using three separate parent email addresses, and observe one student in each account.

I am excited about using your system and at first blush it seems to have a number of advantages over MyBigCampus that we used last year.  However, if we can't look at one student at a time, or somehow sort things differently, it could be a frustrating year.  Can you help us?

  Comments from Instructure

May 2016 Update:

Please find more info at Canvas Studio: Canvas Parent

[aboncosky]

I would like to be able to see my children's schedules separately.  Also the fact that I can only see 10 course on the calendar doesn't help me with multiple children who are at two different schools. 

[alexis_fiechtne]

Aimee...if you haven't already...sign-in, select this "Parental observation in canvas complicated..." idea thread, and vote (choose the <up> arrow) to get the feature added to the Instructure Dev Team's enhancement list!

[clong]

Thanks Cindy & Michelle for some great ideas about informing parents of this feature idea and marketing it to them so they will hopefully rock the vote. This is a real pain point for many K12 schools using Canvas now so I'll make sure to get the word out to our community and parents!

Let's do it.

[micbert]

I have 4 children in two different schools.  Two of them are twins.  The class listing in "My Courses" and "Past Enrollment" looks like a jumbled mess.  The oldest two children are in high school so it's a bit easier to pick out their classes.  But, the twins are in middle school and in the same classes for the most part.  It took me a minute to figure it out, but it seems that the system lists the common classes that the twins are taking only once.  Kinda makes sense, but is confusing when I'm looking at the course listing with a child's name in mind.  The readability of this section (current and past courses) would go through the roof if the courses were segmented by child.

And yes, I voted.

[shannon_larrea]

My parents have started to color code their kids courses on the dashboard if your school is using the new UI.  It's helping a lot with this situation; however, when they click view grades, the color coding goes away.

[fiefamily]

Shannon - thanks for the tip regarding color-coding in the new UI dashboard.

Michelle - I have two children in the same course as well, and only one

course entry is displayed for both in the 'Courses' view. I abandoned use

of the 'Courses' view [because of the jumbled mess you mentioned, and lack

of unique identifier per child]. In my UI version (which looks the same as

it's looked the past two years, so obviously it's the old version), I use

the 'Grades' view as a workaround. Even though it's still jumbled, it *does

*display each of my children's names along with their course names.

On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 9:41 AM, shannon.larrea@bvhs.org <

[kristin_bayless]

I wholeheartedly agree with the parent observations regarding the difficulties of viewing multiple students.

I'd like to throw another idea into the mix from a Canvas administrator's viewpoint.  We are now beginning to use the assigned observer role for school staff.  There are roles such as advocates, mentors, IEP caseworkers, etc. who need the ability to view data on individual students, who do not need to see the same level of data for all students within the account.  Through the use of the assigned observer role, this becomes possible.  While we will be using the global observer role for parents, we will be using the assigned observer role (using observer enrollments) for these specialists (allows differentiation of permissions).  A student filter will be very helpful to these staff as well.

[fiefamily]

There may be a more efficient navigation path for voting, but the below is one I found that works...

Any Canvas user (parents, staff, students, admin, teachers, etc.) can vote!

To vote:

> Log in to Canvas

> Select 'Help' (top right menu option)

> Select 'Submit a Feature Idea' from the list presented

> Copy this text - "Parental observation in Canvas complicated with three children" - paste into the "What are you looking for?" field, and press <enter>

> Select the idea entitled "Parental observation in Canvas complicated with three children!"

> Click the <up> arrow to vote in favor of adding this feature to the Instructure Development Team list of enhancements!

------------------------------

Thanks...and feel free to share with your school communities!

[biray]

 @fiefamily ​ - just note that users who are logging into the Canvas Community for the first time must follow a few more extra steps before going to the Canvas Feature Ideas​ space to search and vote.

Check out:

How do I log into the Community with my Canvas Account?​

[mal340]

Canvas is losing a massive market share to your competitors in the K-12 space simply because the parent interface is not nearly as good as other LMS's. Every major LMS has a parent portal.  Canvas's observer roll doesn't even compare to some of these.  Parents should be able to login, click on which of their child's courses they want to see, rather than have an overwhelming list of subjects that the student is enrolled in, to scroll through.  The first page that parents land on should be customizable, with grades (linked to the school's databases and not separate).