Unpublishing a Module Unpublishes Graded Work

[audra_agnelly]

Not really a question but I didn't find any other posts about this and want to lift it up to others.

We have teachers who will unpublish modules as the year goes on for a number of reasons...clear up clutter for students, keep student focused on current work, close out/hide assignments for students after the marking period is over. We are K-12 and our courses run for 10 months, many teachers set up a weekly module so unpublishing them is common practice as is unpublishing older modules when a new marking period begins.

With the new publishing options released over the summer, the unpublish option changed to unpublish the module and all items. Previously, unpublishing the module just unpublished the module but left all the items within it published. The issue we are now facing is that unpublishing the module unpublishes graded student work if the work is set to 'on paper' or 'no submission'. Canvas will not let you unpublish online work with student submissions. Because this was not the previous behavior teachers aren't realizing that graded assignments are getting removed from the gradebook. The teacher I spoke to only found out when I student asked about an assignment that had disappeared.

Anything that causes grade records to just disappear is not designed correctly and needs to be fixed. 

[audra_agnelly]

Support has directed me to this Idea Suggestion Ideas and Themes that recaptures my above post. Of course we no longer have the ability to comment on Ideas on the community to discuss scope of impact and use cases. I don't really see that this issue fits as an idea suggestion. This isn't a request for a "nice to have" feature, there are flaws in the design of a recently-released feature (which included good things) that has a serious impact on course gradebooks and the accuracy of gradebooks. How many students will see a grade drop from a B to a C or worse because an assignment was unintentionally removed from the gradebook? 

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi @audra_agnelly ...

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Of course we no longer have the ability to comment on Ideas on the community to discuss scope of impact and use cases. I don't really see that this issue fits as an idea suggestion.

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This isn't really an answer to your question, and you may already be aware of these Guides, so I'm posting just in case you or others reading would like to look at these Guide...which explain more about the "Open for Voting" windows that happen a couple times per year:

• How do Ideas and Themes work in the Instructure Co... - Instructure Community
• How do I participate with themes? - Instructure Community
• How do I comment on ideas and themes? - Instructure Community

I hope these links will help in some way.

[KristinL]

Hi @audra_agnelly  -

Thank you for taking the time to explain and to share this with the Community! I have shared this with someone who worked closely on the release which included the updated modules functionality, and they actually asked if you had worked with Support. It doesn't feel like it is working as intended, and they want to take a closer look.

I will use your email address to look for your case number in Salesforce, but Instructure may reach out to you via email or respond to this thread to gain more clarity.

[audra_agnelly]

@KristinL support just directed me to the Idea that has already been submitted. ticket 10266325 

[audra_agnelly]

@KristinL my ticket was closed, has there been any additional chatter around this issue?

[KristinL]

Hi @audra_agnelly - Yes! The Product Team is looking into this, and I'll update you as soon as I have something to report.

[KristinL]

Hi @audra_agnelly !

One of our amazing Product Managers provided an update on this idea:
[Modules] Calculating grades from assignments...

And while the solution hasn't arrived yet, I am optimistic that customers will have one soon!