Provide option to allow students to see courses in Future Courses but not click into them

[glparker]

  This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

  Idea open for vote Wed. January 6, 2016 - Wed. April 6, 2016  Learn more about voting...

tl;dr - create a configuration option whereby students can see future enrollments listed in their course drop down menu but not click into those courses in any way

As described here What's the expected behavior of the course checkbox "Restrict students from viewing course before st...

It's important to note that this introduces a change to the behavior of settings from before the new options.  This change is undesirable for us.  The new settings broke what was for us a working system.

Previously, if I published a course, and checked the box "Users can Participate", students would see their course listed in Future Courses, but could not click to access the course.  This was the desired behavior.

Today, if I publish a course, check the box "Users can Participate", and leave unchecked "Restrict Students" (This is the default given our current settings and procedures), students can now access the course in a read-only mode.

If I instead publish the course, check the box "Users can Participate", and check the box"Restrict Students", the course is removed from the students list of Future Courses.    They cannot see that they are registered for the course.

We want our students to see they are enrolled in Future Courses, it provided a confirmation that they were properly registered for courses and were just waiting for the start of the course to begin.

As it is, there is no longer a way to manipulate the available settings to produce our desired behavior.

Please modify the behavior of the "Restrict Students" checkboxes to not hide the course from Future Courses or Previous Courses.

Please add a checkbox for those that want it to "Hide Course from students outside Term Dates"

  Comment from Instructure

February 2016 update

The Canvas Production Release Notes (2016-02-20)  have an update to the original implementation of this feature.

January 2016 update from Erin Hallmark

Posted to What's the expected behavior of the course checkbox "Restrict students from viewing course before st...

[mlattke]

I agree.  We are K12 Virtual, but have rolling enrollments as well, so we have students enrolled in courses sometimes weeks or months before their intended start date.  It is not acceptable for students who pre-enroll in courses to have full access to the course months in advance of the start date.

There are two different kinds of "viewing" to me.

- View the name of the course in the course list.

- View course content.

Then there is "participation" which is obviously viewing the course in the active list of courses, viewing the content, and interacting with content.

I would argue that "access" is viewing the content.

Students should be able to view the name of the course in the course list under future enrollments WITHOUT being able to view the content.  This is definitely how it used to work.  Future enrollments were NOT clickable.

[mmitchell]

Yes!

We've had a big increase in calls and cases where students think they're no longer registered for courses. Current students as well as new students are all chiming in.

Even after posting an Announcement, as if people don't read announcements on the dashboard...

[Renee_Carney]

January 2016 update from erinhallmark​

Posted to What's the expected behavior of the course checkbox "Restrict students from viewing course before st...

Erin Hallmark on Jan 12, 2016 5:40 PM

In April 2015 Canvas released the Restrict students from viewing courses before start date/end date checkboxes as a way to restrict students from accessing courses before/after the course start/end date. Since then—as you noted—some admins had problems after selecting this checkbox because students weren't able to see they were enrolled in a future course. Fast-forward to November 2015 where Canvas created a bug fix relating to future enrollments, which essentially created a new read-only access role for all future enrollment courses, and caused another level of inadvertent confusion.

So here's how the checkbox works as of January 12, 2016 in your PRODUCTION environment (yes, we put it in there today just for you).

All students can view future enrollments in their Courses list. Gone are the days of students who don't know they are enrolled in a future course. The change we made was whether or not a future enrollment also includes a link to view the course. We've redefined the Restrict students from viewing courses before start date checkbox to do exactly what it says—if that checkbox is selected, the future enrollment course listing does not include a link to the course. They can see they are enrolled but that's it. (This is the exact behavior seen when a course is unpublished.) If you do not select that checkbox, students can view a link to the course and view anything they want, but they'll see a message at the top of the page saying they can't participate in the course until [enter start date here].

Account-Level Settings

Here's how the checkbox works filtered down from the account level. If you set the Restrict accesscheckbox at the account level, any new course you create will automatically have the course-level Restrict access checkbox selected. However, instructors can manually remove the checkbox if they prefer to have students view their course ahead of time.

Account Setting	Course Setting (new courses only)

If you select the sub-option to Lock this setting for sub-accounts and courses checkbox, theRestrict access setting is locked for sub-accounts and courses. This change applies to both existing courses and new courses.

So if you have any existing courses that need to be restricted, open your Account Settings and select the Lock this setting for sub-accounts and courses checkbox, which will apply immediately to all sub-accounts and courses. However, if that option won't work for your institution this term, you’ll have to manually update the courses that you want to restrict using SIS or the Courses API.

Locked Account Setting	Locked Course Setting

Course Overrides

Obviously you can use the Restrict access checkbox in addition to the Users can only participate in the course between these dates checkbox. Again, the difference is just whether you want them to access the course before the specific course date or not. Note that you only need to set specific course dates if you want to override the student access date set by the term date.

Course in Future Term Only	Course in Active Term w/ Course Date Override

Here are some setup scenarios and their results (I tried them all):

• A course set in future term dates: Students can access course but not participate until start date
• A course set in future term dates + Restrict access checkbox: Students cannot view link to access course
• A course set in future term dates + Restrict access checkbox + Users can only participatecourse checkbox: Students cannot view link to access course
• A course set in active term dates + Users can only participate course checkbox: Students can access course but not participate until start date
• A course set in active term dates + Restrict access checkbox + Users can only participatecourse checkbox: Students cannot view link to access course

Students cannot view link

Students can access but not participate until start date

[ccalderon]

We are at a loss as to why this change was made and what purpose the Restrict checkbox even carries at this point. We also have used Term dates for the past three years as a way to control student access to courses, and it has worked great. If teachers wanted a student to have early access, they could change the Settings and easily make that happen. The ability to Publish/Unpublish courses made this even more efficient - we had no confusion on the part of teachers/students. In short, it wasn't broke. Now it is.

Why has this now become so complicated - for what business reason? Our understanding of the Restrict checkbox was to prevent students from seeing their future courses AT ALL - which makes sense in a K12 situation, but not in higher ed. In K12, you sometimes do not want students to see future courses because schedules can be very fluid. The ability to hide future enrollments now doesn't exist at all - so what is the thinking behind the Restrict option? What new functionality was added with this?

Anyone...?? :smileyconfused:

[Renee_Carney]

The Canvas Beta Release Notes (2016-02-08)​ have an update to the original implementation of this feature.  Find more detail at https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-5926#jive_content_id_Account_Settings

[Renee_Carney]

The Canvas Production Release Notes (2016-02-20)  have an update to the original implementation of this feature.

[tdelillo]

FYI - this particular issue seems to be resolved as of the March 12, 2016 release.