[Sections] Terminology issues with the Sections feature

Problem statement:

Universities use the term "Sections" to refer to a different roster of students based on day/time and/or instructor of the course. So they disable the feature that allows instructors to set up sections within their own course. This also severely limits the ability to differentiate assignments and quizzes. For example, I have a career focused class with some students early career exploration and students with years of work experience. So I differentiate the assignments and quizzes to be relevant for their career stages. Since my university doesn't allow us to set up a section within our class, I am having to manually assign each assignment to specific students (which when you have over 250 students is labor intensive as we need to type in each student's name to assign it to them).

Proposed solution:

Please update the terminology to use a term such as Differentiated Groups and promote the feature as a way to differentiate/personalize instruction within a single section of a course. And/Or Create a way to set up a Group where we can assign quizzes and assignments to individuals in a group.

User role(s):

instructor

4 Comments
KristinL
Community Team
Community Team
Status changed to: Seeking Clarity

hi @CarlaMandell -

Thank you for taking the time to share an idea with the Instructure Community. I searched through some existing ideas, and I wonder if  [Assignments] Assign to by Group for Individual Assignments would meet your needs. If so, I'll merge your request and details into the ongoing thread of the other.

Thank you!

CarlaMandell
Community Member
Author

Hi @KristinL 

No these are two separate ideas. The one you linked is about assigning students to groups for assignments and the issue of seeing each other's assignments. 

My actual idea is about renaming the Sections feature and promoting its intention to universities so they are less likely to turn off that feature for faculty.

My second suggestion was the work-around that allows instructors to setup individual assignments based on a Group setting by clicking their group in the Assign to space.  This part is more closely aligned with the linked idea you mentioned. 

Hope that clarifies my idea.

Best

Carla

KristinL
Community Team
Community Team
Status changed to: New
 
nathanatkinson
Community Team
Community Team
Status changed to: Open