Set Assignment Default Due Time

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

We are a K-12 school. One of the biggest negative feedback items we receive on Canvas has to do with assignments being due at midnight (11:59). Parents are concerned that we effectively asking them to stay up until midnight to turn in their homework. This is especially important for our middle school and junior high students.

 

We would like to be able to set assignment due time to default to a time that can be set in our school's account settings.

 

Yes, it is true that teachers can change the time, but we are relying on them doing the extra steps all the time to match our school's assignment policy - and it requires a lot of clicks to make this simple change.

120 Comments
jbaldwin1
Community Novice

It would also be nice to default the time by section or course. Thank you for considering this change.

melodyc_lam
Community Contributor

It would be amazing to implement this on Canvas. As a school that uses a block scheduling system, having default times would be great for making sure that students get the same amount of time to do an assignment. It's tedious having to pick out which section gets what due date when we have multiple assignments to deal with on a daily basis.

ebonakdarian
Community Participant

Come on, just do it, or minimally remember the previous due time .. my classes are at say 8:30, 10:30 and 12:30 and assignments are due at the start of class. I waste so much time re-entering this information over and over. From the posts above it is clear that this isn't just something that bothers me.

If I had 100 points for voting, I'd toss them all that way.

richard-jerz
Community Contributor

Esmail, this has nothing to do with you voting 100 points.  As you might see, this feature request began in August 2016, about three years ago and prior to your post, has had no activity for six months.  For it not to be "archived" the current 314 votes must therefore put it in the upper 10% category, according to the Canvas procedures.  Yet, at the top, I see: "This idea was considered when developing our product plan for Q3 2019 and is not expected to influence development within Canvas at this time," and "If this idea is in the top 10% by vote next cycle it will be reconsidered."  So, I think that you have your answer.  The developers have, in their own way, said: "this idea will not be developed."   However, it remains open right now and will be looked at again in the next cycle (which is unknown.)  Who knows when these statements were created by Canvas, they could already be a year old since they are not dated.  So, the number of votes is not influencing progress, it is the lack of Canvas (developers) taking an interest in this.  Of course, we never are told how many votes qualifies a feature request to remain active and in the upper 10%, so this feature request can be archived (meaning "canned") at any time, or it can be reconsidered at any time.  The good news is that it hasn't been archived, yet.  

(If I have misrepresented the situation, I apologize, and please correct me.)

ebonakdarian
Community Participant

It is helpful, I appreciate your message clarifying the situation Rick.

I received an e-mail this morning linking to this page that made me think that despite the indication that this definitely wasn't a high priority item (apparently far from it) some feedback might still be in order/helpful. I did notice that staleness of messages too. Since I think this would be a very useful feature, I figured no harm in advocating for it.

Thanks!

Esmail

(Former U of I student Smiley Happy )

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

Hey Rick.  The post says Q3 2019, which means the comment was just updated per our commitment to update quarterly.  In-fact, the notification people got was because we updated the comment.

Adaptation: Feature Idea Process Changes talks about how the top 10% is calculated.  And you can always find a quick link to the top 10% by vote at any time on Ideas.

We try to be as transparent as possible in our roadmap and feature idea process, which we know opens up the door for criticism.  The only difference between "sharing because we sincerely care" and "lack of Canvas (developers) taking an interest" is perspective, honestly.  (glass half full or empty).  If you want more information on prioritization, please take a look at What is the feature development process for Canvas?

richard-jerz
Community Contributor

Hi Renee, thanks for your post and clarification.

As a suggestion, someone should add a date to this top comment about "This idea was ...." so that it is obvious how old these are.  Otherwise, how are we to know?

Okay, I went to the click link and found 8 pages of feature requests that apparently make up the upper 10%.  It appears that at this point in time, it only takes 227 votes for a feature request to be within the top 10%.  Great!  Thanks.

So, my comment to Esmail that he doesn't need 100 votes is still correct.  And, at this point in time there is no development on this feature request, meaning the glass is completely empty.  If development were in progress, then the glass is starting to be filled and Canvas could provide a percent complete. I guess that I don't see the glass being half-filled relative to development.  Yes, I understand development.  Right now, only 10 items are in development, and the odd thing is that these 10 items are not in the upper 10% (see graphic.)  Well, I am probably not filtering this correctly, or am I?  I go to your provided link, Renee, and then on the right side click on the "In Development" button and see what I have provided below.  

I seem to confirm this by first picking "Top 10% by Vote" and then applying the "in development" filter, and nothing shows.  What am I doing wrong?

In Development

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

Rick, there is a lot more 'in development' than just single feature ideas that were submitted and aligned with priorities.  If you would like to see what's being worked on, look at the larger topics on the https://community.canvaslms.com/community/ideas page.

Not all ideas related to priorities are marked as 'in development' for many reasons.  The largest being that this is all a manual process and although we do our best we can't catch them all.  So it's always best to read the priority descriptions to see what is being worked on.

richard-jerz
Community Contributor

Renee, you are going to have to help me.  We seem to have several questions, but let me focus on the main question.

1) "Which of the feature requests in the upper 10% are in development?"

Can you tell me how to filter for these, and maybe provide a screenshot showing what these filtering conditions should produce?

Also, what did I do wrong in the screenshot that I posted above?

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

You didn't do anything wrong 😉

Just letting you know that it's not a 1:1 that you would be able to sort by the 10% list and see what is in development.  Sometimes there are things identified as impacting the roadmap for the quarter that are in the top top 10% list but are not identified through the "in development" stage yet, because they might not be actively 'in development'. 

For example, https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1124-submit-an-assignment-on-behalf-of-a-student is noted as influencing the product plan as part of Priority: Assignments 2.0, but it is not in active development yet, so it is not in the 'in development stage.  It may still carry out a couple quarter or so, in-fact.  That's why I encourage you to always look through the priorities (themes), rather than looking for a finite list that provides more room for manual error.