[Rubrics] Finding Rubrics

[tyler_mckell]

When a teacher wants to add a rubric to an assignment, they currently have to search through all of their courses to find the right one. This may require them to scroll down a long list before they find the right course. While it is helpful that rubrics are available to use from other courses without importing them, it would be more efficient to have two options on a menu or tabs:

1) Rubrics from this course (Default view)

2) Rubrics from other courses

This would allow teachers to add rubrics from the most likely place and also allow them to search through their other courses if they wanted.

[kroeninm]

Wow I love this, I would only use the current course feature quite honestly but I'm with Kona on the answers.  Alphabetical sorting works best for us (but we utilize the term in the naming scheme) so others may prefer term.

Definitely don't hide past courses, if we are looking to pull in a rubric from a different course, it usually is a past term course.

Discussions are important to add this to, quizzes in the future but we don't utilize rubrics yet here.

Anything that would get the current term rubrics to pop up I'm all for :smileygrin:

- Melanie

[dhulsey]

Kona's answers are on point. I concur completely. I can only add that I will install this as soon as it gets released.  Thanks, James!

[tyler_mckell]

 @James ‌, your work is very impressive! Thanks for taking the time to explore the idea more and dive into the technical side of things. I don't understand specifics of the scripting that would need to be done on the back end. My main focus is the user experience and what is most efficient for the course instructor. Your script would be a major improvement to the current layout. Having the course listed at the top would give the teacher quick access to the most likely place to find their rubric. The course details also are an important consideration. Any additional information such as the semester, term, or year would be helpful. 

I would agree that an additional search function would not simplify the problem. The average teacher is not likely going to remember what they named their rubric. It would be easier to find a rubric within a specific course. The search function would also be worthless if some course details are not available. When courses have the same name, it is a guessing game to try to figure out which course is which. 

I agree with how  @kona ‌ responded to your questions with a couple of additions: 

Do you want to hide courses that are done? A Boolean toggle to hide “Old Courses” would be helpful because this list could be long and repetitive for many instructors. Most instructors will want to pull rubrics from their current course or last term/years courses. I imagine it is rare when they want to dive back into the archives beyond that. I would define old as more than 365 days old at set the default to hide these courses.

Is the list paginated? For heavy users and those that have been with Canvas for many years, pagination seems like it would be necessary. Hiding the old courses could eliminate the need to have it in the default view. I also can't stand when I see multiple places to scroll within a single window. Holy Scrolly that is a lot of scroll bars, Batman! Pages would be better.

[mcowen]

 @James ‌, this will be a great Canvancement!  I agree with the responses above with one suggestion... How about sorting alphabetically, but grouped by terms? If there are no terms used, then just alpha sort.

For example:

Communications 101: current term

Math 113: current term

Sociology 130: current term

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

Communications 101: Fall 2016

Math 113: Fall 2016

Sociology 130: Fall 2016

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

Communications 101: Summer 2016

Math 113: Summer 2016

Sociology 130: Summer 2016

If instructors are more likely to be looking for rubrics from recent terms, this would minimize scrolling as the course list becomes longer over time. Especially if you are looking for a rubric in a sociology or zoology course.

[James]

Pagination involves the way information is delivered on the backend from Canvas to the web browser. When there are more than 50 items, it's typical for Canvas to batch deliver part of it and then load the rest in the background. That way the user isn't waiting around for the entire list to load. I'm not talking about adding pagination to the interface, that would complicate it more.

That's also part of why I was asking about hiding old courses -- to make it easier to use. If someone wanted to hide the old courses, but then needed it for some reason, they could temporarily disable the script.

I only had 30 courses with rubrics, so I could not tell if there was pagination happening. My alternative is to go into Beta and add myself to a bunch of courses as the teacher and then see if pagination occurs. I was hoping someone already had more than 50 courses and could tell if the whole list was immediately available or if it loaded more as you scrolled down.

This may turn into a release 1 of the basic functionality and then at some point down the line I'll look at adding more features. I'm pressed for time in my classes right now, have a couple of other projects in the wind after coming back from Khaki, and don't have a lot of development space open. It's my need to deliver awesome at the first go round, but I have to keep reminding myself that something is often better than nothing.

The scripts are fairly easy to use -- once you install it, you kind of forget it's there until you have to do it on a machine where it's not installed. I may be biased, but some of the people chiming in here have used them and will hopefully attest. You might look at the top of https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-6061-obtaining-and-using-access-report-data-for-an-entire-c...‌ for the quick install. This would be similar.

[ronmarx]

Love this thread, thank you all. Concur with Kona's answers too.

[James]

The deal with the terms is that it's there for some and not for others. Do you think it would be best to move the indeTERMinable courses (courses where a term can't be determined) to the bottom?

[tyler_mckell]

A concern might be that a current course with no term could get moved to the bottom. The term "term" does have different meaning depending on your organization. What about using a course start date instead of term? 

[James]

I thought of sorting by course date, but there could be too many starting dates for the same term as our faculty may decide to open up one of their Spring courses a week early, but it's still a spring course. When they go to find it in a later semester, they're not going to think "this is first because it was opened a week early", they're going to wonder why it's not alphabetical -- if they give it any thought at all.

I am not going to get into the term means different things to different people issue. I have to program it according to the data structure provided by Canvas and use their definition of term.

[dwillmore]

We need to think about the account and sub-account levels as well.  What I would really like is to add a folder system to the rubric area and just treat each object as a file, letting me sort my objects in what would be a meaningful way to me or my department/campus.