More than one Assignment Page to handle a large number of assignments

[CurtisPro]

In my Canvas course I have posted over 350 assignments.  

Because of the large number of assignments, it takes ~20 or 30 seconds for the Canvas Assignment Page to load and the page is unresponsive until it loads completely. Some assignments only take the students a few minutes to do. When they complete an assignment,\ and return to the list of assignments, it takes another 20 or 30 second for page to load again. That repetitive delay is enough time to get distracted, which I want to avoid. 

On the Assignments Page, I use groups to organize the assignments, but these groups do not decrease the loading time required. Is it possible to have more than one Assignment Page so that I can organize the assignments in a way that would decrease loading times?

[mzimmerman · Accepted solution]

Hi @CurtisPro 

There isn't an option to create multiple Assignments areas.  However, it might help to think of the Assignments area is a place for you, the instructor, to manage the assignments.  You do not have to send students to the Assignments area to access their assignments.  

You can use multiple Pages or Modules to link to individual assignments as students need them, and not show the Assignments area to students at all in the course menu.

[paul_fynn]

@CurtisPro I agree with @mzimmerman that you don't need to send students to the assignment pages, however our institutional approach to assessment means that we get multiple versions of assignments for multiple students and can't rely on instructors to keep up with these by adding links elsewhere (note that if you use Syllabus links to assignments appear there - all for you, only those the student is attached to for them).

However, my reason for replying is that I do not think that the lagging that you (and I in one of our large modules) is by design.

My view is that this is unexpected behaviour that needs to be addressed at Instructure level - It would be useful to get more details of others experiencing the same issue, but I will escalate this to the Community Coaches channel.