Removing Nicknames From Old Courses

[Pandq_]

As a student that suffers from perfectionism, I wanted to ask if there is any possibility to change and/or remove old nicknames from past enrollment courses. I found out that I can change the colors of old courses on the calendar tab, but nicknames were nowhere to be found as inactive courses cannot be added back to the dashboard. I know it's not a huge issue, but it had really been bothering me, and I came here since my teachers would brush off the matter. Is there anything I missed, or will I just have to live with it? 

[Ron_Bowman]

@Pandq_ 

As you have figured out, there is no way to change the nickname unless you can view the course on your dashboard.  Because the courses in question are inactive for you, there is no way to change the nickname.  The courses should not be visible anywhere accept from the all courses link.  I am curious as to why you want to change the nicknames because to see the courses in various places in Canvas, they have to be on the dashboard - which you are not able to do.

[Pandq_]

That's was the expected answer, but to answer your question, I wanted to change the nicknames because I find myself frequently wandering into the courses tab, which angers me that some old nicknames aren't orderly to current nicknames. I would be okay if the past enrollments were deleted, but previous high school class enrollments remain. As mentioned prior, I consider myself a huge perfectionist, and without all my classes being completely identical is quite aggravating to have in mind, but if there isn't anything to change about it, I won't make it a huge deal.

[kvollmar]

The reason is as Pandq_ said: perfectionism. Nothing more, but nothing less. I too got into the habit of editing course names and colors. I color coded them so that all courses that are the same topic would be the same color, and I removed the course code from the name so that I could see clearly the title of the class I was taking. (For example, Graphic Design instead of CGD 112 B - BASIC GRAPHIC DESIGN. Surely you can imagine what a hassle it is when my course list looks like "CGD 112 B BASIC..." on each one.)

On one of my courses I was too preoccupied by other things to change it before the class ended. This means I have to sit in the silent agony of every course being organized to perfection except one.

It's misery. I don't even have a compulsive disorder or anything like that, but knowing that once I graduate there'll be a system somewhere with my name on it that has such a glaring imperfection/doesn't all perfectly match, I think I'll feel an eye twitch for the rest of my life. It's okay if you can't understand a strange, petty sentiment like ours... but it's very real.

[jclendenning]

Hi Ron,

The main reason for the request (to easily change the display name of past taught courses) is to have some sort of list order of class displayed in the copy from list, and a human readable name for referencing past taught courses when seeking past class resources. When looking to copy assignments, pages, rubrics, etc., from past classes to the current, they are ordered based on the non-human readable course names the school used to create the original course shell. This makes it almost impossible to find what is needed from past courses without an elaborate and time consuming Easter egg hunt for the material I need. I know what semester and what class houses the resources I need to copy or reference, but cannot find it in the sea of codes. 

Last year, I reactivated my old courses just to go through and apply a set of human readable names to each course so they would show up in a predictable order. This has made life much better. However, I have found another issue due to the way these classes are displayed and need to make another set of naming convention changes to overcome the default sorting of past courses. It would save weeks of time if we were able to quickly edit course names without having to reactivate, rename, then deactivate all past courses. The last time took over two weeks of full-time work to get sorted. I have since added all of my classes to my favorites so this is less of an issue, but now this has made life difficult because all of my classes are in my course dashboard.

Is there no way to add this as a feature? 

[SherriCallister]

I would also like to have the option to change the nicknames in my inactive classes. I can remember the name of the class I took, i.e., Data Analytics, but I cannot remember that it was called DATA 3300. A year later, it took me a minute to figure out which class was which.  I have some classes that I have nicknamed and others that I hadn't, I am wishing I had done that before.   

[SusanNiemeyer]

I'm surprised that you still come across these courses when clicking on the Courses tab. I'm an instructor. When I click on Courses, I only see the current ones. In order to see the old courses, I have to click on "All Courses." Unless I need something from an old course, I rarely do this. 

Because these courses are Inactive, your past teachers won't be able to change the nicknames. 

[Ron_Bowman]

@SusanNiemeyer 

I think that what they meant by the courses tab - the all courses link,  But I am not 100% sure of that.  I was wondering why he was going to all the courses as well.  Because like you the only time I go there is to look for old courses or to star the courses for the next semester(our admins create our canvas courses as soon as registration begins, so I will be seeing fall courses coming up in the next few weeks)

[ddessauer]

As an instructor & course designer I have years of history in 'all couses' section which I dip into and revisist to collect resources and things I need for building new course content.

For my use case being able to update old nicknames would be very useful to help organise that bulk of information. Because it wasn't ever apparent that this would become an issue the names they have not ideal at all and now stuck like that!

Henceforth I am giving each couse the short clear nickname while active. But then I will add date information to it at the time I am resulting students just before the course closes and locks up.

It would be preferable to be able to edit nicknames within the all courses tab, but as this is not the case, perhaps other facilitators can adopt my method if it mitigates the issue for them too?

[MsV2]

I discovered this issue this year and am very disappointed that the nicknames are now locked. I would like to remove the nicknames or change them to an archival coding system when the class ends. Now I'm stuck with the class periods as the nicknames. 

[jclendenning]

I share this same issue. This would be a huge quality of life feature for those instructors who have a large back log of classes they dip into when building new courses. It would also be nice to be able to sort through all past classes based on key words or through clicking on the column labels.

[txtodd]

For the same reasons already described (archival organization) I would hope a nickname edit feature for past courses could be added.

[amheath]

I too frequently use my past courses to import materials into current courses. It's not just a preference issue for me. It wastes a lot of time when I have to sift through old courses that don't have obvious names. My organization changed the way it assigns course numbers in the past few years and so the numbers are not consistent. Time. TIME. I value my time and I don't want to waste it trying to figure out which old course is which. I hope re-naming of old courses becomes a feature soon.

[ddessauer]

In case you missed what @jclendenning mentioned earlier in this thread, there is a way for teacher/facilitators (sorry students!) to change old course nicknames, it just isn’t ideal. What you need to do is:

1. go to the course’s settings screen and alter the end date to be in the future. I just edit the year number only.
2. returning to the all courses tab. You can not favourite the course.
3. returning to the dashboard you now have the course card showing with its vertical ellipses menu which will permit you to edit nickname.
4. once that is done you can return to its settings page and reset the end date to its original correct year.
5. You will probably then want to go back to all courses and unfavourite the course to remove it from the dashboard again.

This process functionally solves the problem, and I have not encountered any unforeseen issues with the changing dates & active status. If you have, please add a note here.

I say this process isn’t ideal mainly because there are so many steps for the sake of just editing one thing! Having said that, if you just want to do a sweep of your all content as a one off fix, correcting them all to your preferred naming method - it should be manageable. Many institutions default course names include the year, making it easy to reset course back to their original correct end dates without needing to take notes. 

[SterlingF]

Unless it's after the term has closed which only a school administrator can fix. 

This thread shouldn't be labeled as solved. This is a huge headache when navigating around copying assignments from course to course. 😞

[ddessauer]

In Instructure Canvas, the ability to edit course start and end dates is controlled by specific permissions assigned to user roles. By default, users with the Teacher or Convenor roles typically do have permission to manage course settings including editing the start and end dates.

However, the institution Canvas admin can customise the permissions set for each role type within their institution, overriding these defaults. If you find you are unable to edit specific settings you require, you might want to reach out to your Canvas admin.

[lowejosh]

Hi everyone,

I came to this thread looking for a way to set and change the nicknames for some of my older courses. For organizational reasons, I wanted the nicknames to all use the same format but had a a couple of courses from a few years ago that didn't have nicknames, or had a different format to what I use now. I actually discovered it is possible to set or change the nickname of a course, even after the term has ended, by using the Canvas API. All you need to do is get an API access token from your profile settings (instructions here) and send an HTTP PUT request to your Canvas server for the specific course you want to change. I used this code for cURL to change my courses, but any tool capable of sending HTTPS requests should be fine:

curl 'https://<canvas>/api/v1/users/self/course_nicknames/<course_id>' \
  -X PUT \
  -F 'nickname=<nickname>' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <token>'

Simply replace <canvas> with your institution's URL, <course_id> with the Canvas course ID number, <nickname> with the nickname you want to use, and <token> with your personal access token. You can find the course ID in several ways, including hovering over the link to the course on the All Courses page, or simply visiting the course homepage in your browser and looking for the course ID in the address bar.

Although this API call will set or change the nickname on a course, if you just want to completely remove the nickname you can use this API call:

curl 'https://<canvas>/api/v1/users/self/course_nicknames/<course_id>' \
  -X DELETE \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <token>'

This will remove the nickname from the given course. There's also an API call that will remove all nicknames from all courses in one go. If you're interested, check out the documentation here.

I hope this helps!

Kind regards,
Josh