[ARCHIVED] Course Copies and Announcements, Syllabus

[nlatimer]

Hello Everyone,

I have my teachers import course content from the course they taught last year into new course shells created by PowerSchool. We use "copy a Canvas course" and "All Content."  We have two issues with this:

1) There does not seem to be a way to get rid of announcements all at one time. We remove all the dates when we copy the course, but this does not apply to announcements, and there is no way to unpublish them. All we seem to be able to do is to delete them one at a time or edit each and delay posting. I realize that we could "select specific content" to copy, but that actually complicates things more than we would like.

2) We copy the course syllabus and I have teachers unpublish their assignments. But - the assignments still appear on the syllabus page (without dates). This is also the case in Student View.

Does anyone have any ideas, short of selecting specific content on the course copy?  Also, I think it would be great if we could choose to unpublish EVERYTHING in a course prior to doing a copy. The course comes across upublished, but the publication status of individual items remains what it was. Since this was a "live course" from last year, that means the bulk of the items have to be unpublished manually.

If I am missing something or you know a better way, I am all ears!  ;^)

Thank you,

Nancy

[rconroy]

Forgive me because I'm a novice when it comes to Powerschool. Can you create an unpublished mastershell with the powerschool data and then just copy from that? Or does it have to be copied directly to your live shell from powerschool? Masters are how we get around that issue. 

[nlatimer]

The teachers have PowerSchool course shells for the new year on their Dashboards. We can copy their courses from last year or a sandbox/master course into those shells. I prefer using the sandbox/master method, but they frequently just want to copy from last year's concluded course into this year's new shell.

[rconroy]

Aaaah, that makes sense! So because they have last years material, did they conclude the course, which makes the content unalterable? In this case, you're looking for a way to copy content to a new course without it being published due to that? Sorry for the extra questions on your question! I just want to make sure I understand it fully. It's quite a conundrum!

[nlatimer]

The course is automatically concluded when the term ends and yes, the content can no longer be altered. 

[dhulsey]

nlatimer‌, please ask your faculty to vote and comment on this feature request for announcements: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1102-publish-and-unpublish-announcements?sr=search&searchId=21...‌.  

[nlatimer]

Thank you  @dhulsey ‌!

[kmeeusen]

Hi nlatimer‌

Most of our faculty also prefer to copy from the previous term's course, and don't really make use of Master shells. Although, these would solve the issues you mentioned in your query if you could automate the process.

Unfortunately, I do not see a way of filtering out Announcement when you copy an entire course.

As for the assignments in the syllabus, this should not be a problem if your faculty plan to run the same assignments for the new school year. Once they adjust all the dues dates, the Syllabus page will be fine.  Also, have you considered simply hiding the syllabus page from your students - either permanently or just until your faculty make their changes. From what I read in the Community, many K-12 faculty do not use syllabi to the degree we do in Higher Ed. You can learn how to hide the syllabus page at How do I use the Course Navigation Menu as an instructor? 

If the due dates for assignments is the issue, you can learn a nifty trick for revising all due dates on a single page at https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-8585-adjust-all-assignment-dates-on-one-page which really speeds up the process.

Otherwise, you are back to selective course copying Unless someone else has a nice workaround I do not yet know about.

Kelley

[nlatimer]

Hi  @kmeeusen ‌

I don't know that they necessarily want to use all the same assignments but even if they did, having them all appear on the syllabus like that at once can be very confusing to the kids. This is particularly true as a number of teachers prefer to publish assignments closer to the actual due dates, which they may not know exactly in advance. (For example, perhaps we had some snow days; that could cause the date of an assignment to be adjusted from expectations). Since the teacher unpublished the assignments that got copied over from the original course, it doesn't make sense to me that they continue to appear on the syllabus page (albeit without dates).  
We actually want to use the syllabus page, especially for teachers new to Canvas, as it is an easy way for them to set a home page before they are familiar with doing things like creating their own. We use it to post a course description for the kids (expectations, etc.) and the teachers like the running "log" of assignments with due dates at the bottom (although having them ordered by most recent first would also be nice!)

[snugent]

A lot of our faculty do not like the syllabus tool in Canvas because of the assignment list. Here is a feature idea that has gain quite a bit of traction. 

• Option to exclude Assignments from Syllabus

As for Announcements I tell our faculty to either do the selective content option on the import screen or to edit each announcement and set a delay date so students don't see all of the announcements at the beginning of the semester. 

• How do I delay posting an announcement until a specific date in a course?

[nlatimer]

That's the hard part....a number of my teachers DO like this tool!

As far as announcements, I have them remove them or delay posting, but it would be great to have an option to unpublish.

[sworrell]

Very tedious. It would be great to have a simple select all button in announcements like email inbox.

[ajaugat]

Yes, I have the same issue.  Had to go through each assignment one by one and unpublished, the only way to avoid seeing old assignments in new class created.  

[tdurbin]

Do your instructors make use of Modules?

I believe that if you un-publish the module, it will make everything in that module hidden from student view, whether each item in the module is published or not. Then, once the module is ready to be seen, they would only need to publish the module. This would make it so that the teachers can have all items in each module published & ready for student view, but can keep them hidden until ready, by publishing or unpublishing each module.

[tdurbin]

I double-checked this in Beta & it doesn't work like it used to

Now, for me, even when the assignment is unpublished it shows up in the Syllabus page...

I would actually encourage you to file this as a bug, because if the assignment is not published it should not be visible to the student at all, so if the Module is not published, then it & all content in it should be hidden from student view as well.

I will be filing this as a bug & see what support has to say about it.

If they suggest to submit it as a feature request I will see if one exists & up vote, or create a new one...

[nlatimer]

Yes,  @tdurbin , that is exactly the problem.  Here's a summary of the scenario:

1) Teacher copies old course to new course, selecting all content. In my situation, it is usually more trouble than it's worth to teach most people about selecting specific content. The "Select Content" appears randomly in a place where you don't notice it; when I first started doing this, I used to sit there and go, what's happening? The button to select content should come up right after you choose that option, in my opinion. Then you have to know to choose the dropdown next to each content. You annoyingly have to purposely leave out announcements and the syllabus. And the syllabus is something we require our teachers to have; they shouldn't have to keep totally re-doing it every year. Hence, we choose all content and then deal with unpublishing, etc. (Once again, I understand everything comes over in the state where it was last at; I'd love an option to unpublish EVERYTHING on a course copy!)

2) We remove the due dates when we make the copy. All assignments come across with no due dates. We unpublish all assignments. Result:

• The assignments (with no dates) are still visible on the syllabus, even though they are unpublished
• The assignments are also accessible from the calendar, by clicking on "Undated items" on the right

We tried this through "Student View" but I have several teachers who will check on it when school starts next week to ensure that their students are actually seeing what we are seeing.

As a side note, we might have a situation where the module is published, but the assignment within the module is always NOT published.

I agree with you and think it's a bug. Can you please keep me apprised as to the status, as I was going to issue a ticket myself?  Thanks very much.

[tdurbin]

I would recommend that you also file a ticket for the bug report & include as much information & as many screenshots as you can. The more reports they receive, the more they will take it seriously as a bug that needs fixed. Also, it will get multiple support people working on it & we could end up with completely different answers or results.

[nlatimer]

The items in the modules are also not published.

[tdurbin]

I've been doing a lot more testing. If the assignment itself is unpublished the students will not see it

**Note** you need to reset the student view with every change you make, or it will not pick up changes in status. I have a 'real' test student account, to test with, because there are quite a few cons to using the student view.

I am currently working with support on pinning down what exactly should or shouldn't be happening & I am using a TON of screenshots from the different views. I will keep you posted on what I find out through support & would be interested to see if you get the same responses to the issue.

[sworrell]

You do not see it in the syllabus view or the calendar (undated)? I think the issue is really about the fact that there needs to be one button to unpublish things when copying a course because telling teachers that they have to manually click on every single assignment is not the news you want to deliver. Others are saying, if I understand correctly, the assignments can still show up in other places under some conditions?

[tdurbin]

Yes, the assignments are still available under some conditions.

I have been told by many Canvas people & support that if you unpublish a Module, it will hide everything in it, regardless of status (published/unpublished) from student view. This works only in relation to the Modules page & does not work globally unless every item is unpublished separately. It does hide the Module & everything in it, but does not hide the (published) items from assignment view, calendar, Syllabus, etc. So even if I were to hide ALL navigation links except the Modules, they would still be able to see & access items through Calendar (unless unpublished).

If you unpublish items (or make changes) without resetting the Student View, you will not see the changes. 'Real' students will not be able to see anything, anywhere if it is unpublished.

[nlatimer]

Interesting. I know that someone came to me with this problem last year and I looked at Student View and the assignments were there. But I remember looking again at some point, and they were not. That may have to do with what you are saying,  @tdurbin , about resetting the student view.

I understand what you are saying about the modules, and that is what I have taught my teachers about them. These assignments are not published, while the module may or may not be published. I have checked both the assignments and the modules pages for publication status.

I just reset one teacher's student view and still see the assignments in the calendar. But as you say, there are some issues with student view. I am going to wait until school starts on Tuesday (our courses are available to students then) and start checking this from some student accounts directly. I have a feeling that you are correct and they will not see these unpublished items on the syllabus. I will let you know, and thanks so much for testing this out!

[tdurbin]

The response I got from Support was quite long, so I will summarize.

Whenever an assignment is published, students get it sent as a notification (even if the box is unchecked for notifying students of changes)

Via support :

Students being able to see unpublished assignments in their notifications 
only happens when the course is available and when they were previously published
This is because it is a notification message and not a to do list item.
If you do not want students to receive this, we highly recommend avoiding publishing it. 

As for items still being available in the Syllabus & Calendar (via support):

While items in an unpublished module are still visible in the Syllabus or Calendar, 
students are not able to access them. However, unpublished items in the modules are 
not visible to students at all. To hide them from the Syllabus or Calendar, 
un-publishing the individual item will hide them from the Syllabus or Calendar view. 
This actually provides more utility than hiding them completely, as you now have both 
options available to you (hide completely or maintain in Syllabus). Many instructors 
want the assignments to appear in the Syllabus summary and calendar even if they do 
not want students to access the details yet. You can confirm this by un-publishing 
an item in an unpublished module and trying to view it in the calendar.

So from the sounds of it every item that you do not want a student to know is in the course it needs to be un-published.

[cholling]

We have learned not to "Copy a Canvas Course" with our academic courses because it results in a course that looks the same as a regular registrar-generated course, complete with course and section identifiers. That may be unique to our institution, but we have found much better results using "Import Course." It also gives us the flexibility to import the entire previous course or select specific components.

Imported assignments even if unpublished do show in the Syllabus' course summary, but I have learned that they are seen only by teachers or others with authoring rights. If we switch to student view, students don't see the unpublished items in the Syllabus.

Having the announcements come into the new course with the import continues to "bite us" because students can see them and are often confused -- they don't think to look at the dates and see that they're old. They simply expect announcements to belong to the current course. I will definitely vote in favor of any effort to set end display dates on announcements because I think it will help both the current course by keeping it tidy and fix the issue of the imported announcements.

[tdurbin]

I've been telling our faculty to use Import/Export for a HUGE number of reasons other than the one you mentioned for "Course Copy". Using the export option, severs all ties to any previous courses, which avoids all kinds of messy disasters that can occur after several forward copies using "Course Copy".

Unpublished items, cannot be seen by students in any form (with exception to having been previously published). According to support. Any time any 'new' items are created within a published course, a notification WILL go out to anyone in the course that has their notifications set to notify of new content (which is separate from the 'Notify users of this Change' checkbox). This makes me wish even harder for more granular notifications (perhaps course based notifications?), so it's not an ALL or NOTHING decision. 

Also, as a heads up, if you publish an item to test submissions in Student View, you will not be able to unpublish that item, because Canvas will not allow you to unpublish anything with a submission (even if it is just the Student View test student).

[cholling]

You can choose to reset Student View -- which makes it appear that it hasn't been submitted. Of course, the tradeoff is if you need to keep that test action for some reason.

[sworrell]

Just s simple select all button on announcements would be great so you could delete old announcements at one time.

[nlatimer]

Hello Everyone,

Okay, it's been a hectic first couple of days of school, but I was able to look into this more deeply by masquerading as certain students in a few teacher's classes who complained about the issue with the syllabus. This is what I found.

• Any assignment that was published shows up in the syllabus for the students. There is no due date, because we removed those on the course copies. Makes sense. Teachers are confused because they see everything, published or not, on their view of the syllabus. We had used Student View before but did not realize about doing the "reset." 
• It doesn't matter if the module is published or not; if the item is published, it shows up; if it is not published, it doesn't. 
• These published items are also accessible from the "Undated items" option in the Calendar (more on this below).

What I did not realize right away that we were also seeing on the syllabus for some of these teachers were calendar EVENTS.  The problem with calendar events is the same as the problem with announcements: there is no way to unpublish them. You can find them by going to your calendar and clicking on the little arrow next to "Undated" on the far right of the screen. Once they come up, you need to select each event individually and delete it.

This was brought up in the Canvas Community here:

Syllabus - past events 

So all of this now points to finding a better way of doing course copies. While selecting specific content can certainly help, it does involve more steps and now telling people....don't copy announcements....don't copy events. And by the way, unpublish everything you don't want students to see when you get over to your new course. This last item was mentioned here:

https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/6173-publish-unpublish-all-option 

On top of that, when using the Import Content/Copy a Canvas Course option this year, I had a couple of teachers who could not even find their old courses to copy from in the dropdown box where you choose them. And there are now so many courses showing up after a couple of years of Canvas use, that sometimes it is impossible to tell which course was the right one to copy from. To get around this, I did a course export and then imported the export package into my new course. Probably easier in the long run, but I don't know how this fixes all of these other problems?

I have considered telling teachers to use Commons but backed off when I read somewhere that it can take time to get a course copied over there. Don't know if this is true, nor if it would help with any of this.

So, here's the major point.....is there a better way than using a course copy that can avoid problems such as the ones we have been having with events and announcements and published items?  Again, I don't see how the "export/import an export package" can fix these issues?

The only real solution seems to be to "select specific content."   8^(

Thanks,

Nancy

[nesterd]

There still doesn't seem to be a way to "select all" announcements to delete them, which is something that would be very useful.