Requirements on an Assignment?

[baldwinsh]

I want to require students to complete an assignment before proceeding to a group meeting. Currently students are skipping the assignment until after meeting with their group which makes them unprepared for the group meeting. One solution we came up with was to make it a quiz, however, unless we do this in Mastery Paths, we cannot figure out a way to force students to do the quiz or the assignment before meeting with their group. 

Is there a better way to do this?

[ryan_corris · Accepted solution]

Hey @baldwinsh!

It would be helpful to know two things.  Do you already use requirements in your course?  And assuming this is an online meeting, what is the method you use for meeting? (ie, Zoom, Teams, something else)  

How do I add requirements to a module? 

Using module requirements, you could use an assignment or a quiz set as a requirement to give access to the next item in the module. Since I am unsure of how the students will access the meeting, I am going to go with the idea that the information for accessing the meeting will be on a Canvas Page.  The meeting information could be a link, a password for the meeting, or whatever info you need to give them.  If both the assignment/quiz and the meeting page are set as requirements in the module and the requirements are set to Complete all and Students must move through requirements in sequential order students could either submit the assignment/quiz (or need to receive a specific score) before they could be able to access the meeting page.

The following image shows a module in student view where all of the items are requirements. (You can still have module items without requirements, but students will be able to access them at any time.)

• Top left shows that all required items must be completed
• First item is the first requirement.  Students will need to submit it for the requirement to be met and unlock the second item. (Could also be set to a specific score, but would need to be graded.)
• Second item is grayed out since it is locked and students cannot access it until the previous requirement is completed.  The requirement for this quiz is to score 17 points or higher to unlock the next item.
• The meeting information page is also grayed out and will unlock when students receive a score of 17+ on the Unit 1 Assessment.  Even though this is an informational page and there is nothing to really do, the page has to be set with a requirement too or else students will have access to the page before the other requirements are completed. Once the page is opened, students will see the meeting details that you have added, but there will also be a button states Mark done.

This is a single example of many of the ways this could be accomplished.  The important thing to remember is that if one student completes the requirements and has access to the Meeting Information page, they could easily share it with other students.  

I would consider having students complete a peer review exit ticket (Microsoft or Google Form) following the meeting that could show how prepared their peers were for the meeting.  The exit ticket could also be used for the instructor to go back and spot check those students that were in the meeting, but had not yet met the module requirements to access the Meeting Information  page.

If you have questions or need clarification, feel free to reply and ask questions.

[baldwinsh]

Hi Ryan!

I do use requirements in modules, but I haven't required things to be done in a particular order. 

As an instructor, I love group assignments where only one student from the group submits for the entire group. This really helps with grading fatigue from redundancies and reduces the amount of time I have to grade.

Your Meeting Information suggestion is a great idea that I hadn't considered before. Thanks very much for these suggestions!

[jsowalsk]

@baldwinsh I agree with other people's comments. To set requirements you need to create a module. Once you set the requirements you can tell Canvas if you want people to do it in sequential order or not.