[People] A way to identify/distinguish between students with identical names is necessary

Problem statement:

In large courses, there are often one or more pairs of students with identical first and last names. When sending a message to students and selecting specific students, there is no way to differentiate which student is which. For example, you have two students named John Doe. When selecting a student's name, you will see John Doe twice. There is no way to differentiate who is who. This issue also occurs throughout the Canvas platform. For example, when viewing grade book history and in the SpeedGrader. There is a possibility that this is an issue in other places. Also, recent versions of the Gradebook now seem to do this automatically (as of whatever version we have been using since January), but the issue is that the same change is needed in other Canvas tools where students are searched for by name.

Proposed solution:

Include a display option to add the students' middle names and/or include the students' SIS ID when selecting students in Inbox Messaging, viewing grade book history, SpeedGrader, and anywhere else where students' names would be revealed.

User role(s):

admin,instructor,student,ta,designer,observer

Added to Theme

2 Comments
KristinL
Community Team
Community Team

Hi @masantos -

This idea may also be related to or could complement: [Gradebook] Nickname for students with same name 

AlexisNast
Instructure
Instructure
Status changed to: Added to Theme

This idea has been added to a theme for further consideration