[To Do] Disable the To Do List

[jmccarth]

I want students to work from the Modules and complete work in the order on the Module.  This ensures student learning progresses in a sound pedagogical order.  The student To Do list completely sabotages student learning.  If they click on an assignment on the To Do list without doing all the preparatory pages and information I have listed, in order, on the Module, they are not properly prepared or reinforcing their learning.

I have to put big red words to asking them NOT to work from the TO DO list, but some students will take the short cut anyway.  

Also, the student To Do list takes up too much screen real estate.  This right frame is completely counter-productive and unnecessary. 

Please put in a feature where the instructor can control or disable the student To Do list.

[gordon]

Please make it so!!!! we need a way to either limit to-do's to just the current term or something to lower the length of the list.

[sarah-canatsey]

Maybe a bit of a compromise - instead of disabling the list view - how about the list view offers more than just what's due today. Or maybe adding smaller course cards at the top to give a reminder to students to go into your courses.

Just because nothing is DUE today, doesn't mean there is nothing to DO. I think it's a disservice to students to get in a habit of only looking at what's due on a given day. 

[artrue]

This as in many things in Canvas, need to yield more control to the instructor.  I would not like it to be discarded completely it is a nice feature, but more control over it would be great so that I can better serve the needs of my kiddos!

[e_f_jansen]

Also coming from the other side: my own (Teacher) todo list is also entirely useless in higher education, while at the same time very distracting (with all the red bullet and counters on the home page). For some reason, the list assumes that I am single handily responsible for grading every single assignment that was handed in by any student in the many courses (all with over 100 students) in which I'm teaching. Luckily for me, I'm not. But it would be great if there was some way to either suppress these todo-list items for some courses, or to explicitly be able to tell Canvas who is responsible for grading which assignment or section.

[SHEREENADYER]

It would be useful to have a way to turn off the assignment reminders that appear on the right side of a student's screen when viewing their Dashboard and class page. I have curriculum that is pre-loaded ahead of the start date for students who work asynchronously. Some students start a few days after others. The students are asked to complete work in the order listed in each module and complete each module from the top down. Students who see the assignment reminders are often confused, click on the links, and complete the assignments this way. This results in them completing the work in the wrong order, interfering with their learning of the content.

[thompsonky]

Please put in a disable feature on the to do list for students. 

[fordda]

As long as you never put a time and date on the assignment settings, it will not populate to the student to do list.  I put the time and due date in the title of the assignment in Modules.  Then I put all of the lesson before the assignment instructions on the same page so they are forced to read through the lessons before they can do the assignment.  Even still, many just skip to the bottom of the page and try to do the assignment before doing the lessons.  This has helped tremendously though.  

[mcarpenter2]

I just chatted with Customer Service on this as well.

I suggested that they entertain the idea of adding a TO DO List Enable/Disable selection in the Feature Options tab of the settings page.

Guess we'll see what happens from here.

[alavan]

The original response noted this was open for voting. Where is the link to voting? It was once easy to find the items open for voting, but even with a search, I can't find it.

Thanks.

[James]

@alavan 

This thread was copied from an old platform that allowed up/down voting. In 2020, they switched to a new platform. This platform uses a five star rating system at the top under the title. Click on the stars to indicate your level of support for the idea.