Releases Q&A: 2021-11-20 Dashboard (Course Creation Subaccount Menu)

[erinhmcmillan]

Looking to discuss this feature from the 2021-11-20 Release Notes? Post a reply and start a conversation!

POSTING GUIDELINES

• This topic is for feature discussion only—please share use cases, best practices, etc. regarding this feature
• Please thread replies as much as possible to keep posts organized

WHERE SHOULD I POST...?

• Idea enhancement feedback to product managers should be submitted in ideas.canvaslms.com (though linking to the idea here so others can find it is welcome)
• Bug reports should be submitted to Canvas Support—bugs will not be triaged in this thread

[rmurchshafer]

This new feature is a problem for us.  We've purposely let teachers have the ability to create courses only because they all go into a sub-account that we can control.  Since all of our "real" courses are created by SIS upload, we don't want manually created courses in that same sub-account structure as it will mess up analytics and metrics we pull on our live courses.  Plus, since we have the ability to manage permissions differently on sub-accounts, we've used that to specifically control what can and can't be done in that Manually Created Courses sub-account.  We don't allow teachers to enroll students for instance as a way to avoid "rogue courses".  

I very much understand the request to have this feature and it's need in some cases, but please make it an option.  Many of use have a specific use case we use that Create a New Course button for and this new feature is going to force us to turn off the ability of teachers to create their own courses.

Rick Murch-Shafer

[stephensda]

100% in agreement. Consider leaving this feedback in the respective entry under Sub-Accounts for Manually Created Courses within Idea Conversations.

[stephensda]

This will introduce significant chaos in our use of sub-accounts. This should be behind a feature flag for admins to disable. Another idea would be to place a checkbox next to each entry on the sub-account list page for admins. Checking the box could indicate a sub-account as needing to be hidden from the drop-down menu available to users, etc.

Feedback to product developers can be made at: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Sub-Accounts-for-Manually-Created-Courses/idc-...

[mzimmerman]

Agreed.  We have the "Manually created courses" sub account specifically set up with the permissions we want for instructors who are creating sandbox courses for course development.   Also, we do not want to stats and analytics for our "production" SIS-created courses to include all of these instructor-created courses.

[palmarinich]

This is a fantastic addition!  BUT, as @stephensda already mentioned, this feature will cause serious problems if implemented as it currently exists in Beta.

If nothing else, it will permit teachers to created courses in sub-accounts currently dedicated only to officially scheduled courses generated via SIS. 

I think the solution is as simple as adding an admin option to select which sub-accounts are included in the "Which account will this course be associated with?" list (default setting should probably be OFF).  I sincerely hope this is in the works, and just hasn't been put in place yet.

At the risk of sounding dramatic, if this feature is implemented as is, we will need to disable the option for faculty to create their own development courses. 

[erinhmcmillan]

Updates to this feature are being discussed by our product team.

Thanks!

Erin

[kirsten_ryall]

I'll feed this back to our tech team as well for their feedback. I do echo those risks outlined above though. Feature flag may be a good option if that is possible. Placing a checkbox next to each sub-account is not a preference for our institution due to the quantity of sub-accounts we have.

Update: had a chat to our tech team and they outlined similar risks to above. LTIs may have been added to a sub-account that we don't want certain users to access as it will provide them an unintended experience (like the issuing of badges for some enrolments but not others). Be good to get it behind an optional flag.

[erinhmcmillan]

Please see the updated note added to the release notes; this feature will include an account setting. However, it isn't yet available in the beta environment for testing.

Thanks,

Erin

[rmurchshafer]

Yay!!!!

[stephensda]

Excellent. This makes much more sense as an optional setting. 👏

[kirsten_ryall]

Looking forward to see how this will work with the 'account setting option' in beta environment. Any news on when this will be available?

Possible to get an update on this @erinhmcmillan ?

[erinhmcmillan]

Hi @kirsten_ryall 

The update was added to the release notes on 11 November as noted in the change log.

Thank you!

Erin

[kirsten_ryall]

Thanks Erin. I thought I had checked the notes since then but clearly I had not. Below is how it looks in beta to me. But the notes says Teachers would have access by default so that seems to be different to the release notes (unless I am interpreting them incorrectly). I'm still concerned that an Admin can create a course and place it in any sub-account, without understanding the structure and history of the sub-account. I'll take this back to me team and see how we will manage this. Thanks again for the update.

 

[erinhmcmillan]

I think the checkboxes populated based on how they were already selected. I'll remove that line from the notes to prevent further confusion.

Thanks,

Erin

[lezonl2]

What will the default option be set to for where teachers can create a course? It appears to be "Allow creation anywhere the user has active enrollments" which is what several admins are concerned about.

[erinhmcmillan]

The default is anywhere. If you prefer to change that, you can do so on Saturday after the feature is available.

Thanks!

Erin

[robotcars]

Just going to echo the need for Account Admins to select the sub account we want user created courses in. The Manually Created Course's sub account has a different purpose for us, and we cannot have teachers creating courses in the accounts where their SIS courses are. We have a Sandbox sub account and would like to be able to choose it as the single account Users create custom courses.

Feature/Idea: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Allow-Account-Admin-to-select-which-sub-accoun...

[palmarinich]

This is so disappointing.  The only new option is to allow teachers to manually create courses "anywhere they have active enrollments"? (the other selection is the same as having the feature disabled entirely, so what's the point of that selection?)  This completely ignores the concerns expressed here that admins need some ability to indicate which sub-accounts can (or cannot) be used for manually created courses.

As others continue to point out, enabling this feature opens the door to SIS sub-accounts intended only for official courses, which effectively renders it useless on our instance, in my opinion. 

This is one of the fastest turnarounds I've ever seen of a proposed Idea to deployed feature.  I applaud Instructure for their attention to the community, and the prompt introduction of the suggested feature.  But for goodness sake, please listen to the feedback from users along the way, or it's all a waste of time. 

Thanks @robotcars for the link to the "new" idea to make this feature more useful.