Releases Q&A: 2022-04-16 New Quizzes This Course Item Bank Filter

[HeatherAhern]

Looking to discuss this feature from the 2022-04-16 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

[afurr0026]

It appears that a “shared to course” item bank in a course will also copy over to another course shell and will maintain that “shared to course” status in both course shells. Great news.

However, even though the item bank is shared with the course, the instructor must be assigned as a Teacher or TA role in both the original course and the course that content was copied to in order to view the “shared to course” item bank in the course that the content was copied into.

From my perspective, these “shared to course” item banks are really not associated with courses as I thought would be the case, but are still associated with users.

Am I missing a step or permission setting somewhere?

Is this how the “shared to course” feature is intended to be used? If so, why would instructors use this share option as opposed to just sharing the item bank with another user?  We were hoping that the “shared to course” feature would allow item banks to be associated with courses that have been copied into future course shells which would allow new instructors to access the item banks shared with the course they are teaching.

[james_whalley]

I had a report from an instructor that all of the item banks she made in a course were not in This Course. So, I tried it for myself and find that everything I created goes to All Banks. Am I missing something here? How does an item bank get to This Course? The documentation reads, "The This Course filter displays existing item banks within the current course."

[james_whalley]

Upon further investigation, it seems This Course serves the exact same function as Banks Shared to Course. If they both include all banks shared to a course, why have them both? Is there some way they are differentiated?

[james_whalley]

After 13 emails back and forth with Canvas support, I was finally told, "The backend work for this filter to include item banks shared to users in the course or created by users in the course has not been completed. Until this is completed the workaround is to share the banks to the course." So, why even put out a filter that is not working? When I asked that, they replied, "There is not currently a timeline or ETA for when this work will be completed."

[MPioRoda]

Thank you for your comments and patience, we've identified the issue and are developing a way to prevent this issue from occurring in the future.  The fix should be released in about a week. I will update here once it is good to go. Thanks!

[MPioRoda]

Just wanted to give a quick update on the issue, we pulled it back to investigate, we identified that the issue was occurring on courses with large numbers of assignments so we're adding operational improvements to support very large courses. I will give an update once the work is complete.

[james_whalley]

I was just wondering if there is any update. I am running into issues with this filter still and do not see any differentiation between "This Course" or "Shared with this Course", which sucks because TAs cannot see Item Banks in  the "Shared with this Course" filter AND if TAs use the migrate feature to turn a Quiz to a New Quiz, the included Question Groups will become Item Banks the TAs then cannot see!

[MPioRoda]

HI @james_whalley! The work to improve and optimize data in the backend is still ongoing. Further updates will appear in our quarterly updates and in the New Quizzes hub .

[james_whalley]

@MPioRoda I must be missing something, because, when I go into the New Quizzes Hub, I can't find anything concerning this issue (other than a recent post where someone is complaining about this same issue). It's been almost a year now since this issue was raised. Is there a reason non-functional filters are still there on the UI side?

[MPioRoda]

@james_whalley, we have provided information in End of Quarter Updates, the last mention was in the Q3 update, where we clarified that:

At the moment, the "This Course" filter shows any Item Banks that are shared to this course. For now, the part of the functionality that we pulled back was for that filter to show what was USED in this course, but the focus is still on the course the user is currently in. It is important to note that the difference between “This Course” filter and “Banks Shared to Course” is that “Banks Shared to Course” shows all banks shared to ANY course that a user can access - not just this course. The use case for Banks Shared to Course is if you know you used an item bank in a different course but weren’t the one who created it, you could use this filter.

Because the focus of this filter still remains on "This Course" - the course the user is currently in - we do not consider this as a non-functional filter which would necessitate our engineers doing the extra work to remove and the re-release. We have made progress on the backend work being done to add operational improvements to support very large courses which positions us to add back in the USED part of the filter.  

[james_whalley]

@MPioRoda, I understand what you are saying, but would counter that I haven't found anyone who actually teaches a course using New Quizzes who is not confused by this and doesn't think it is broken. I'm just saying that not fixing it is causing a poor user experience and often causes faculty I know to steer clear of New Quizzes if they are currently Question Bank users with Classic Quizzes. I know the documentation (now) clarifies what each filter does, but maybe changing the naming of the filters would help. This Course could be Banks Shared to this Course (since that is actually what that filter is) and Banks Shared to Course could be Banks Shared to a Course (since not having an article before Course can be confusing). That would be a really easy fix code wise and would make these filters more user friendly (which I would hope is the goal).

Thanks.