Student To-Do List not being properly populated

[loren_barnhurst]

I have a 'quiz every day' for my students to optionally take for review and keeping content fresh (College Chem courses).  I have used this system for 6 years flawlessly, including last semester (each day quiz is title, e.g. Wk2Tues, etc).  These quizzes always populate the 'To Do' list for students, and as there is 1 every day, this is very useful.  Starting this semester, for 2 of my 3 courses, this no longer works?!?  This indicates to me a problem on Canvas end.  When I 'View as Student'...the quiz is properly shown in the To Do so I assumed everything was good.  When students view it, no quizzes appear.  I made no changes to any of the 3 courses, yet 2 now don't work?  Any ideas?

[NoahBoswell]

Hey @loren_barnhurst -

Thank you for posting on the Instructure Community.

I wanted to confirm that I to am seeing these issues on my end, however I'm unable to view the quizzes in the to-do list in both student view, nor can my students see it in their to-do list either. This behavior isn't normal.

Have you considered reaching out to Canvas support about this matter?

- Noah

[loren_barnhurst]

I first had consulted my Canvas IS support person, and they could not figure it out. I asked them to reach out to Canvas, but in my experience, Canvas support is much weaker than colleague support lol.

[dbrace]

Hi @loren_barnhurst,

I have also had varying degrees of success when reaching out to Canvas Support.

What I can say is that Instructure/Canvas engineers need a support ticket to be created in order for them to research the problem, develop a fix, test the fix, and then roll it out.

Reaching out to Canvas Support directly is also a way to get an additional set of eyes on it because they might come across something that we cannot see.

-Doug

[loren_barnhurst · Accepted solution]

Thank you, I did consult with my Canvas IT person and they submitted a ticket (complete with video evidence of the problem).  They were quickly responded to with a "this problem is not only you and is under investigation/repair right now".  This seems to be promising in terms of getting a solution sooner rather than later.

[loren_barnhurst]

Someone marked this as a solution.  This is NOT solved.  I keep reading threads without solutions but marked ‘solved’.  Please stop that 🤣

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi there, @loren_barnhurst ...

Sorry to read that you felt your above response was not a solution to your original question.  One thing you should be able to do is to click on the three-dot kebab icon at the top right corner of the marked solution (in the green box) and then select the option "Not the Solution".  If you do not have this option, then there are others here in the Community with more permissions that could do this for you.

Also, I just wanted to point out this Community Guide for you...and especially the area in the light blue box at the top of the Guide: How do I mark a reply to my question as an accepte... - Instructure Community - 574386.  It used to be in the previous Community platform that only one response could be marked as "correct".  In the current Community platform that we are currently using, more than one response can be marked as a "solution".  This helps because there may be more than one way to accomplish the same thing...even if it might require a few extra steps to do it.

I hope this helps in some way.  Sing out if you have any questions...thanks!

[mwadmin]

I encountered this issue yesterday (March 2025).  An instructor noticed that many of his students were missing assignments since the beginning of the semester--even some of his best students.  When he questioned them, they said that the items never appeared on their To Do lists or on their calendars.  It seemed to be completely random, but the missing rate was quite high.

Because there is a similar issue with Students missing from SpeedGrader and imports, I checked a little further into the import.  Section 01 was imported from the previous semester, the automatic date selection by the system was used to change all the assignments dates.  Since it all looked correct, no changes were made.  Then the 01 course was imported into section 02.  The only thing that needed to be changed was the time on all assignments, which the instructor manually changed, then saved.

The interesting thing is that the To Do lists were working correctly in section 02 where there had been a slight change to the time, and then they were saved.  But those same assignments were not working in section 01, until the instructor changed something and saved.

A quick search on Google of “Issues with To-Do lists in Canvas” displayed this:

Canvas "To Do" lists can display incomplete information or have issues with assignments not appearing or disappearing prematurely, especially when courses are copied and due dates aren't adjusted, or when assignments lack due dates. Students should also be aware that the mobile app's To Do list only displays upcoming course activities.

Course Copy Issues: When a course is copied from one semester to the next, due dates might not be updated, causing assignments to not appear on the To Do list or missing submit buttons.

[BethCrook]

Hi @loren_barnhurst, are you using New Quizzes or the Old Quizzes?  I just tried in my Canvas using New Quizzes in two different courses and they appeared in S's To Do lists on Dashboard.  Can you also double-check the Due Date?

[loren_barnhurst]

Hi Beth, I think these are the 'old quizzes'...and that might be the issue as two of my classes use the old quizzes for the last 6 years and both are not 'working'...while the class I taught for the last 2 years works fine (and my guess is was using the new quizzes when I made them).  I don't know how that can be fixed...but it is a good option for me to look into.  As I have a quiz every single day of the school year, I don't relish rewriting all of the quizzes.

Side note: The dates are all correct, I have followed the same protocol this year that I did for the last 6, and to have problems in 2/3 classes (and others have also reported this issue)...points to something more akin to your new/old quiz theory.