Features Q&A: Canvas Deploy Notes (2022-08-03)

[InstContentTeam]

Looking to discuss these features from the 2022-08-03 Deploy Notes? Post a reply and start a conversation!

Interface Updates

• Course Settings: Hide Shift Dates Checkbox in Importing Content [Delayed as of 2022-07-27]
• Gradebook: Message Observers Who Default Subject Line
• Gradebook: Distribution Graph Statistics update
• Rich Content Editor: Action Required for Modal Exit
• Speedgrader: Rubric Unsaved Changes Warning

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• Please thread replies as possible to keep posts organized. This will help everyone to track discussions and to participate.

ADDITIONAL FEEDBACK—WHERE TO POST IDEA SUGGESTIONS AND SUBMIT BUG REPORTS

• Idea requests for the Product Team to consider should be submitted in ideas.canvaslms.com . This is the best way to ask for additional or alternative functionality than what is included in the release. Linking to the related idea here so others can find it is encouraged!
• Bug reports should be submitted to Canvas Support. This way, cases can be connected and uniform updates can be provided to those involved. Bugs will not be triaged in this thread

[chriscas]

Hi,

Just wanted to make a comment about the adjust dates feature...  For background, we do have the "don't let teachers modify course availability dates" option turned on, as we want all of our courses to run within the official term date, unless overridden in extremely rare circumstances by an admin.  With that said, I feel the ability to shift/adjust course due dates should still be available to faculty who use the import feature.  Adjusting dates during import can really save faculty a lot of time with adjustments, even though we know the due date shifting is not perfect (different break weeks, holidays, etc).  Can someone explain why this feature would be unavailable just because we don't want course dates changing?

I know in the past (and sometimes still currently), adjusting the due dates with the importer actually ended up changing the course availability date (which we don't want).  it should be possible to let faculty adjust the due dates and just leave the course dates alone though.  I know some due dates may be outside of the course availability in this case, but if you don't allow date adjustment, everything will end up with a due date in the past, outside of the new course availability dates anyways.  Maybe I'm completely missing something here though.

In summary, I definitely do not want anything other than admins action to modify the course availability when the "don't let teachers modify course availability dates" option is turned on.  We do still want to make things as friendly and easy as possible for faculty though.

-Chris

[audra_agnelly]

From the screenshot, it appear that with the loss of the adjust due date box, we also lose the option to remove due dates on import. Removing due dates is the practice we encourage teachers to follow. In the past, we found that when teachers do not shift or remove due dates, they import last year's due dates, causing lots of work to be auto-marked missing and auto-scored with 0's (when teachers have set that rule).

[SusanNiemeyer]

As an instructor, I'm also perplexed why we might be losing the ability to shift/ remove dates when we import content from an older course shell into a newer course shell. Can you please explain in more detail what instructors will actually be able to do (and not do) with this change?

If you are taking away instructor agency in shifting/ removing dates, please provide a rationale for it.

[James]

I'm in agreement/confusion with the other people here. What does course availability dates have to do with assignment availability dates?

This reads like an "oh, we forgot to hide the shift dates when we hid the others and so this is a small thing that no one should take issue with." But course availability is not the same thing as assignment availability and the ability for faculty to change dates is controlled through other functionality and permissions.

Chris ( @chriscas ) supplied some rationale when he said the shifting of dates can change the course availability dates. That sounds like undesired behavior regardless of whether faculty can change the course availability dates or not. I suppose that it might seem like a convenience to so that instructors don't have to go into the course settings and change the dates when they do an import.

Removing the ability to shift dates seems like the wrong solution. The better fix is to make sure that shifting dates doesn't change the course availability dates. If you want to keep that convenience factor, then don't change the dates when the ability to edit the course availability dates is denied.

[AllisonHowell]

@chriscas @audra_agnelly @SusanNiemeyer @James  Thank you all for voicing your concerns about this decision. Thanks to input from you and others in our community, we realized that this change had a greater impact on workflows than we intended. Based on all of this feedback, we have decided not to release this change. We will revisit as we conduct discovery on how to improve the import tool.