Assign to All But 1 Student

[MisterTay]

I have a student who gets modified assignments (fewer questions, for example).  I want to assign the regular assignment to everyone BUT this one student.  Is there a way to do this that does not involved typing / clicking every student's name except his?  Right now I am assigning it to everyone and just marking it as EXCUSED for him but it's causing him some confusion because he can still open and complete the assignment even if it's marked Excused.

[James · Accepted solution]

@MisterTay 

Two questions come to mind. The first is what type of assignment is this? The second is are you sure you're getting the student properly marked as excused for that assignment?

I ask because the Canvas Instructor Guide says (and this has been my experience) this in the notes at the top of How do I change the status of a submission in the Gradebook?

When an assignment is excused, the assignment page and the student grade page will show the student that he or she has been excused from the assignment. Students cannot submit excused assignments.

The fastest way is to assign it to everyone and excuse it for the student.

There is no way to assign to all but one student.

You need to have a chat with the student so they understand better. Perhaps you could add a submission comment for just that student that says "You should not complete this assignment, but complete assignment xxx instead."

[TrishaMeyer1 · Accepted solution]

Hi @MisterTay ,

Try assigning it to that one student FIRST, then use the +Add feature and select "Everyone" for that option. When I did this, the text changed to "Everyone else" in the upper box. Since the assignment had already been assigned with different settings to the individual student, he was removed from the next set.

To prevent the student from completing the assignment, set the Available date to some time far in the future (or the last day of the term if you have to stay within a grading period) for that student.

If your institution allows you to create sections, you also could make a section with just the one student and another section with everyone else. Then assign based on section. This method may cause issues with syncing to an SIS, so be aware of any limitations with your Canvas/SIS integration.

[James · Accepted solution]

@MisterTay 

Two questions come to mind. The first is what type of assignment is this? The second is are you sure you're getting the student properly marked as excused for that assignment?

I ask because the Canvas Instructor Guide says (and this has been my experience) this in the notes at the top of How do I change the status of a submission in the Gradebook?

When an assignment is excused, the assignment page and the student grade page will show the student that he or she has been excused from the assignment. Students cannot submit excused assignments.

The fastest way is to assign it to everyone and excuse it for the student.

There is no way to assign to all but one student.

You need to have a chat with the student so they understand better. Perhaps you could add a submission comment for just that student that says "You should not complete this assignment, but complete assignment xxx instead."

[TrishaMeyer1 · Accepted solution]

Hi @MisterTay ,

Try assigning it to that one student FIRST, then use the +Add feature and select "Everyone" for that option. When I did this, the text changed to "Everyone else" in the upper box. Since the assignment had already been assigned with different settings to the individual student, he was removed from the next set.

To prevent the student from completing the assignment, set the Available date to some time far in the future (or the last day of the term if you have to stay within a grading period) for that student.

If your institution allows you to create sections, you also could make a section with just the one student and another section with everyone else. Then assign based on section. This method may cause issues with syncing to an SIS, so be aware of any limitations with your Canvas/SIS integration.

[Ron_Bowman]

@TrishaMeyer1 -

that is a good approach to keep the student from seeing the assignment for all the other students.  Of course @MisterTay still has to create the other assignment that is assigned to the single student.  

Ron

[James]

What a nifty trick, @TrishaMeyer1 .

One note, you still need to excuse that student from the assignment.

With some communication with the student about the warning on the page that says they don't need to do the assignment and the inability to submit, excluding the student should be sufficient. I'm still curious about how the student is able to submit when they are excused.

[laura-harste]

Unfortunately, the only way I have found is to click every students' name other than the one with the accommodation.  I had to block a student from discussion a while back due to disruptive behavior and that was the only trick I could find to prevent access.  

The only other ways I could think of (and these are both huge stretches and could easily mess up the organization of your Canvas instance), would be to:

1. Put the assignments into separate Modules, set a prerequisite to access the "Homework Module" and a different one for the "XXXX Module" (preferably named something that would not make it obvious to other learners.  That way you could filter students into one or another location to find all of their assignments.
2. Create Groups in Canvas.  Put this student into one group and the others in the other.  Then Assign all of the regular assignments to Group A and this students assignments into Group B.  This would still involve a lot of work, of course.

Sorry I can't more helpful!  This is an odd accommodation.

Laura

[KristinL · Accepted solution]

To add to this thread, there is a long-standing idea that is aligned to a Theme. Anyone who is interested can subscribe to the thread to automatically receive updates if the Product Team includes it in a future project.

[Assignments] Assign to everyone except selected students 

[AlanSIE]

Just now I found something that sems to me to work - though I can't say whether it's a new feature in Canvas, or merely a side-effect which may not persist!

When creating the assignment first "assign to" "everyone", then add the students you want to exclude, searching for them by name - and note that "everyone" changes to "everyone else". Save the assignment, but then edit the "Assign to" option, resulting in the box in the attached screenshot. In it go through and edit the available and due dates for the individually named students (since I wanted to accommodate them with a later date for the assignment - an open-book test).