Best way to NOT have to cross list but to assign groups or group set to different course content.

[KeithBlakeslee]

Context: 

I run a large scale apprenticeship with hundreds of users. Since i took over, ive essentially been doing what was thought to me.... copy a canvas course and assign people to it whenever i needed a new course. And i run 4 courses 4 times a year which equals 16 courses and alot of data entry, back and forth, and clicks. 

Problem:

Ive imported all course content from the 4 classes into one course (to just have one "box" to manage for the year) but i have apprentices running in parallel on different time lines and want to assign quizzes to some and quizzes to others (i don't want to assign everything to everyone). 

Not understanding "groups" i thought i could assign quizzes per group allowing each group to be assigned individually but i cannot. So i added a section using Canvas' guide but it does not populate under "people".

It would be best if we could assign course work using "groups" and "group sets" and avoid "sections" because sections does not populate the same way groups does. 

I also want to avoid cross listing courses. 

Does anyone have a potential solution for me to have one "course" with multiple groups of people that i can assign assignments differently to each group? 

I want to limit SIS imports and apprentices in multiple locations but need the functionality to filter their grades and assign them quizzes as individual groups and not have to use "everyone" and im stuck with sections not populating.

DEVS: Why can we not drag and drop students from section to section like in groups? Why do we have to cross list "sections" (when sections are also termed "courses" in all of your HELP content? And why is the functionality to assign content to groups not available as ive seen it requested here since 2015!!! 

[paul_fynn · Accepted solution]

Hi @KeithBlakeslee I feel your pain, and have consistently argued for "co-listing" rather than crosslisting.

Ie the ability to do what you are trying to achieve manually where students are added to an existing course rather than being put into a course which is then archived whilst the section enrolment is passed to the new crosslist.

I don't believe that you can bypass the key doctrines built into Canvas, at least not without significant local IT support, and bastardising the way the product works which will generally come back to haunt institutions that go down that path in their future.

• If you are doing what you are doing without institutional sanction you are storing up issues for user and course management and data analytics - do tread carefully.

Crosslisting does work fairly well within its limits, it is heavily maintained by instructure, and you do have the ability to assign communications, activities, assessments and (since June) content to specific sections, with specific publish or release dates, and specific due dates.

Given the scale of your workload, it is hard for me to imagine that your organisation isn't, or doesn't need to be, on top of this, and to be looking at improving their practices and systems controls to support you.

• We would be having stiff conversations with any of our colleagues who tried to take your approach - we have a managed Canvas system with tightly managed operations, instructor deviation from which causes major problems, often at scale, or with the effect of punishing individual students

hope that gives you an alternative view.

(I think the groups / sections distinction is an important one and the two sets of tools overlap but are not the same, and need to be used in an informed way).

good luck !

Paul

[paul_fynn · Accepted solution]

Hi @KeithBlakeslee I feel your pain, and have consistently argued for "co-listing" rather than crosslisting.

Ie the ability to do what you are trying to achieve manually where students are added to an existing course rather than being put into a course which is then archived whilst the section enrolment is passed to the new crosslist.

I don't believe that you can bypass the key doctrines built into Canvas, at least not without significant local IT support, and bastardising the way the product works which will generally come back to haunt institutions that go down that path in their future.

• If you are doing what you are doing without institutional sanction you are storing up issues for user and course management and data analytics - do tread carefully.

Crosslisting does work fairly well within its limits, it is heavily maintained by instructure, and you do have the ability to assign communications, activities, assessments and (since June) content to specific sections, with specific publish or release dates, and specific due dates.

Given the scale of your workload, it is hard for me to imagine that your organisation isn't, or doesn't need to be, on top of this, and to be looking at improving their practices and systems controls to support you.

• We would be having stiff conversations with any of our colleagues who tried to take your approach - we have a managed Canvas system with tightly managed operations, instructor deviation from which causes major problems, often at scale, or with the effect of punishing individual students

hope that gives you an alternative view.

(I think the groups / sections distinction is an important one and the two sets of tools overlap but are not the same, and need to be used in an informed way).

good luck !

Paul

[KeithBlakeslee]

Paul, 

Thanks for your input. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending upon how you look at it) i am the sole person in our program using Canvas so i am the key support figure and decision maker. 

Weve met with instructure corporate several times over the years as we are one of few apprenticeships using this software and they would like to make it more marketable to more atypical educational institutions such as ours but they lack the interest to actually do anything the things we bring up. 

I appreciate your point of view and in depth description on how cross listing is supported and the functions it offers. 

[paul_fynn · Accepted solution]

Hi @KeithBlakeslee 

we are one of the largest UK University apprenticeship providers with nearly 30 apprenticeships across the institution including large scale police and nursing apprenticeships, over half of DAs are in the faculty which I support as a Learning Technologist.

To date (since the introduction of Canvas seven years ago) the Canvas LMS is doing exactly what we want it to for Degree Apprenticeships with less difficulty than we have encountered with either our SIS system, nor our "integrated" third party e-portfolio choice which we are currently moving away from.

• Having a positive relationship with crosslisting is key to what we do

Units of delivery (in our speak "modules") are generated according to the trimester in which they start, the relevant teachers, students, assessment, module definition form and assessments are automatically provisioned via some excellent middleware created by our IT Team, and assignments are managed via an eVision integration feeding all relevant data and updates to Canvas where students submit and work is graded.

Where a DA is co-taught with another DA, and occasionally non-DA, crosslisting allows us to have common content which (since June) can be differentiated by section (which corresponds to the occurrence (year, module, mode, location and sequence). Assignments are always differentiated by occurrence (Canvas section), which means that the niggly DA requirements appear only to the relevant cohort. We have the potential to use Mastery Outcomes in a differentiated way.

An early issue was that DA's were not originally reflected in our SIS (students were seen as Degree students plus), and we constantly battle to make sure module and course cohorts are appropriately differentiated in the SIS.

We handle DA tracking requirements (Off the Job Hours, KSB tracking, Three Way Reviews etc) through formal zero credit modules which give those requirements and their achievement or non achievement a presence in the SIS (rather than sitting in external spreadsheets) and students can be both tracked and nudged by study skills coaches. These sit in persistent crosslists (one per course) separate to the academic modules.

• Importantly the ZCMs must be completed before the apprenticeship can be awarded, otherwise a student could walk away with a degree without completing the standards, leaving us with a financial deficit. The ZCMs make completion visible to Academic Registry.

Things are improving in terms of ease of management as the UK standards drift towards becoming fully integrated with their host degrees, completion of the module in the future = completion of the DA KSBs.

• If I was seeking improvement it would be to have Canvas preload the DA Standards in the same way that state standards are loaded in the US.

However the challenge there is that IFATE are only just digitising the standards properly (I'm sure you've had to screen scrape these from pdfs) and we will be running out unstructured standards for some years. Last time I checked IFATE hadn't published their standards database. Additionally the apprenticeship standards are non-standard in how they have been set up, which makes it difficult to treat them effectively as a database or to feed an LMS, so IFATE standards would need to be both rationalised, and truncated to be able to fit the Canvas Mastery Outcomes, which is where they need to belong. (There is scope to improve outcomes management, and there has been discussion of this alongside recent rubric management updates).

In terms of perceived responsiveness from Canvas to local markets and specific institutional needs, that is the compromise all institutions make when choosing a global SaaS provider. The larger proportion of Instructure's business is in US K12 education and IMHO we all get the benefit of their economies of scale. Universities are a smaller proportion of their market, and European (and UK institutions) a fraction of that - That said they remain the market leader and have not lost a North American HEI client yet.  

DA's are a further fragment of that global provision, and I would argue are too new for UK institutions be able to speak with a shared understanding and voice. A major failure of DA design was to take account of the data, LMS, and HEI Academic Regulatory implications prior to launch, and both the Education and Skills Funding Agency and OFSTED are filling in the gaps on an institutional basis so we are building on shifting sands. HEBR noted preDAs the challenges with dealing with Public Recognition Bodies, and if anything DA's have amplified that.

If you want to get Canvas to support DA focussed development IMHO you need to be working through the UK HE Canvas User Group, which has been able to get some UK needs raised up the agenda. In particular the User Group has the potential to share experience and isight to develop some common archetypes or schemas - and it may be possible to develop these alongside and integrated with Canvas, rather than requiring Instructure to change Canvas.

One final note is that whilst DAs are a UK product (although there are European models) competency based education is widely used in US and Australia, and we ought to be able to learn from their existing experience.

PM me if you want a detailed chat - bear in mind that across our four faculties we are ourselves still working towards a unified DA approach in SIS and LMS...