Are requirements in a module based on ASSIGNED assignments?

[brigwald]

Sometimes I have 2 versions of an assignment in a module (one regular and one modified for special ed students).  If I select "Students must complete all of these requirements" in the module settings, does that apply only to the version that was ASSIGNED to a particular student?  Within each module I have their notesheet (2 versions) that get submitted and the questions based on the assignment (2 versions).  Selecting "one of the following" must be completed ignores either the notesheet or the questions.  I am worried about saying "ALL", for fear that students that receive the modified versions won't have it checked off, due to not doing the regular versions, as well as the regular students not having it checked off, due to the modified versions not being completed.

[Steven_S]

I do not frequently have an alternate version to provide students, but it happens in at least one or two courses for a few modules.  I have been placing the original quiz that needs the alternate version as the last quiz in the module.  I put the alternate immediately before the original, because I excused the students from the original, and I did not want them to be blocked by the excused quiz, since I require module requirements to be met in order. 

It worked.  The students who needed alternates were able to complete the alternate, and the students who were not assigned to the alternate never noticed it.  What it does not do is check off the excused original quiz as complete.  I did not include the alternate as a module requirement however. I was concerned that doing so might block the rest of the students from the original quiz, since they would to have access to complete that module requirement before reaching the original quiz, as required by sequential order.  This might be something to do some testing with if it happens to involve multiple activities in every module.

As an alternative, you could also sub-divide the module.  Everyone does all of module 1.1, students "choose one" of the split activities in module 1.2, everyone does all of module 1.3, etc. 

Mastery paths also give you an option for letting students self-assign appropriate activities (without predefined due dates) https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-use-MasteryPaths-in-course-modules/ta-p...

[brigwald]

Thank you for your reply.  First of all, I don't find Mastery Paths helpful at all.  They are so restricted, require so much work to set up, and could easily be replaced by a much more functional and robust prerequisite/conditional system, such as the one used by Moodle, my previous LMS.

The issue I would have with your suggestion is that I would need to go into every single regular assignment and excuse my students who receive modified versions and go into every single modified version and excuse 150+ regular students.  The time required would be prohibitive.  Another issue with that method relates to the gradebook.  It would multiple listings in the gradebook for each assignment and would quickly clutter up the gradebook.  Starting this year, the Canvas Gradebook is the official gradebook for everything and that is what parents and students use to track grades.  I can see that system leading to a lot of confusion.

That brings us back to my question:  Do the module requirements consider assignments which have been assigned to individual students/sections (which are really groups).  My regular students never see the modified versions, as they are not assigned them within Canvas.  Students who receive modified versions do not see the regular versions, as they are not assigned them within Canvas.  (And as a result, they only see THEIR version in the gradebook.)  One would assume that modules should take into consideration whether or not a required assignment was actually assigned to a student, but my experience with Canvas leads me to pose this question.  There are a lot of inconsistencies between different parts of Canvas, that I wouldn't be surprised if the assigning system in Canvas doesn't communicate with the requirements system.  I can set up a little experiment to test it, but I figured someone from Canvas or within the Canvas community would have first hand knowledge of this already, since I can't be the first person to be presented with this scenario.

Again, thank you for your reply.

Sincerely,

Brian Rigwald

[Steven_S]

You do not need to excuse students from activities they are never assigned to.  When you create the replacement activities, the due date "assign to" defaults to everyone (or "everyone else" if you add a second due date for the alternate students).  You can delete "everyone" or "everyone else" and only assign to the selected students who need it.  For the original assignment it is faster to only excuse the one or two students who do NOT need it, but for the alternative version it is much faster to only assign it to those who DO need it. 

For activities you do not assign to students you will see greyed out boxes in the gradebook that do not accept a grade.  The students (and observers) will ONLY see what they are assigned to.  The specific students who are excused for the purpose of an alternate assignment (and their observers) will already be aware of the accommodation, so hopefully this limits the potential for confusion.  I am not suggesting any change to that.

I agree with you about mastery paths, which is why I do not have enough experience to do more than offer the page from the guide.  Those dedicated to make it work, seem to like it, but for me the lack of a preset due date is a deal breaker.

As an instructor using canvas to teach classes, I do not know precisely how canvas is programmed.  If sequential order does not matter for your module activities, and the module in question is not a prerequisite for another module, you do not need to test this.  You can make every single activity in a module a requirement, and students will only see the activities/requirements that they are assigned to. The individual activities will be checked off as students complete them.  (The real answer will be revealed in whether or not the modules are marked completed after students do only the activities assigned to them, but again that check-mark has no consequence in this case.)

Otherwise, all can offer in response to your question is my own experience, because I DO require sequential order.  Out of the same concerns that you had with module requirements, I assigned the activity that needed alternates as the last activity in the module.  The main activity was a requirement, but the alternate was simply listed immediately before that requirement in the module without any programmed requirement.  Students who were not assigned to the alternate, never saw it.  Since it was not a module requirement, they were also not slowed down by it.  The lack of a checkmark on excused activities was not a serious problem for the few students that needed an alternate, because the modules are independent of each other.  Therefore, I did not pursue the issue further. (Since you are actually individually assigning 150 students to the original activity, you do not even need to worry about the "excused" activities.  Students will not even see that there is a requirement they are not assigned to, and so they will not be aware that they should look for a check-mark.)

It is possible that I was over cautious.  It is possible that both versions can be requirements and no students will be held to a requirement they are not assigned to for either sequential order or as a module prerequisite.  I did not need to test that.  If you do need to test it, you may need to ask your admin for a sandbox/workroom and a couple of enrolled "fake" students.  Then you can test the module requirements to see exactly what works and does not.