Creating Optional Modules

[RebeccaKranitz]

My institution is migrating from Moodle to Canvas in the near future. I am currently working to design a "choose your own adventure" course. All students will complete 5 required modules. Then, there will be 10 optional modules, and students will choose 5 of them to complete. 

If I was setting this up in Moodle, I would use the Group Choice activity for students to select their optional modules and be automatically enrolled into groups, then restrict each optional module by group so students only see the modules they chose to complete. 

I'm hoping for some advice on how I can replicate this experience in Canvas. We don't yet have a Canvas instance, but I do have a free Canvas account. The course will first be built in Moodle since our migration won't occur until late next year, so I want to ensure that the course I currently design will migrate well. 

Thank you!

Rebecca 

[ProfessorBeyrer · Accepted solution]

"Choose your own adventure" sounds like a lot of fun for your students, @RebeccaKranitz. I'm not familiar with Moodle so don't know what a Moodle module can contain, but within Canvas terms I'll assume that students will complete a module through some type of assessment. 

To me the easiest way to achieve your interests would be to create an assignment group with your 10 optional modules and set it up so the lowest 5 scores are dropped. Students would then choose the 5 that interest them. If there is content you only want students to see after they select a certain path, you could link that content from the assignment. Otherwise you could share the content for all 10 optional assignments and allow students to view the content before they complete the assessment. There is a Canvas guide that can help with this: How do I create rules for an assignment group? 

Another option is to use mastery paths, which would work best if your 10 optional assignments are split into 5 pairs. With mastery paths, how a student scores on an assignment (I would use a quiz in your example) gives them access to certain other Canvas items (content, other assignments, etc.). That would take some deliberate planning and starts with another document in the Canvas guides: How do I use Mastery Paths in course modules? 

There is another option that will hopefully be coming soon, and that is to limit an assignment to a particular group. How this could work is your students would choose which groups they join and thereby be assigned the particular tasks. Assignments can already be limited to individuals and sections, but the idea to limit them to groups is among the ideas in a theme that was prioritized for development earlier this year: Enable Differentiated Learning at Scale. 

I’m going to mark my response as a solution, but there can be more than one. I hope our colleagues here in the Community can share other options for getting this important information to teachers inside Canvas.

[RebeccaKranitz]

Thank you @ProfessorBeyrer ! Considering that we won't be fully operational in canvas until at least Fall 2024, I think the new differentiated learning feature will get me exactly what I'm looking for and I have time to wait for its release. 

[JamesSekcienski]

@RebeccaKranitz 

Canvas doesn't have an exact match to that Moodle feature yet.  @ProfessorBeyrer has shared some good potential work-arounds  based on existing features in Canvas. 

Even though, the feature doesn't exist yet, you may want to keep an eye on Release Notes, as there is a new update coming to modules in the future that would provide the ability to selectively release modules.  Details about the specifics of this are still limited, but it may be something else that is available to consider using by the time your school migrates to Canvas.

Here is the item on the Product Roadmap that may be of interest to keep an eye on. It is currently part of the Q4 2023 - Q1 2024 release period: 

Educators will be able to selectively release modules to individuals and sections, further enabling differentiated instruction and personalizing learning content for students.

You can also follow this prioritized theme discussion in case new updates about it are shared here too: 

Enable Differentiated Learning at Scale