Releases Q&A: 2022-04-27 Dashboard: Observer Dashboard Update

[AlliFoote]

Looking to discuss this feature from the 2022-04-27 Release Notes? Post a reply and start a conversation!

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[kraimont]

What view will the observer have if they are observing multiple children? Will there be a drop down menu to switch from one student to another? 

[dlyons]

Exactly right! If an observer has multiple students they are observing they will be able to switch between them using a dropdown on the Dashboard. You can also switch between dashboard styles per observer as well.

[HeathGorden]

Will the view be changed in the Canvas Parent App as well for parent observers?  I have had some users at my school indicate that the Canvas Parent App does not provide enough information about their student's classes, so they just download the Canvas Student App and login as the student on their phone.

[jozsefdavid]

Hi @HeathGorden.

We have no current plans to change the parent app's screens in the near future.
If you have time could you please let us know what those parents miss in the first place? What information is not available they would like to see there? Thank you in advance.

[HeathGorden]

Morning!

I believe they are wanting to see an experience similar to what the student sees in the Canvas Student App.  When I use the Parent App for a fictitious student I made, I can see their assignments/grades, but have no knowledge of how the course is built out or structured (i.e. layout of modules).  Also, I cannot see any websites, files, or pages that may be pertinent to my student's assignment (if they are separate from the actual assignment).  

My understanding of the new release is that Observers will see what their Student sees within a browser.  I wanted to see if this line of thinking was going to apply to the Parent App as well.

Heath

[audra_agnelly]

We use C4E in our K-8 schools, and classic Canvas in our high school. A couple thoughts on this change:

1 - Parents with students at least one K-8 student have defaulted to the C4E view this year. For those parents who have a high school student (classic Canvas), they are losing the ease of access they now have to grades. When the UI displays C4E, parents can click the grades tab to view grades for just that child event if that child is older and is using the Classic Canvas interface. With the update, when the parent switches to an older child (high school in our instance), they see Classic Canvas and have the View Grades button on the right. Clicking this opens the grades page (...instructure.com/grades) that lists all courses for all students, which aren't even organized by student unless your institution has add a sort script to you custom JS.

2 - In Classic Canvas, parents see Recent Feedback on the right side of the screen, but not in the C4E view. I think they will find it confusing to have that information for one child and not for the other. I'm sure schools, and my office are going to field questions on this.

3 - The drop down menus are on 2 different sides of the screen. I found this confusing when testing and at first thought the menu had disappeared when I switched from a C4E student (menu, top-left) to a Classic Canvas student (menu, top-right). Can we get these drop-downs consistently located in the 2 views?

I'm glad that parents who only have the classic canvas view will be able to sort by children (per the May release), but there is an inconsistency in information presented in the 2 dashboards. I wish these changes were delayed until summer so we aren't causing confusion around viewing grades in the final months of school year. 

[audra_agnelly]

This change doesn't appear to have gone through. My colleague is also a parent and sees the C4E dashboard for both children, not the switch to regular Canvas. We see this in Beta, and while I didn't think this was ready for release, there was no post that this was being retracted and we sent communication to parents about the upcoming change.

[audra_agnelly]

@AlliFoote is there any update on this? We have not seen this feature in production, and another update to the observer view is scheduled for this Saturday's release. Are parents with C4E and regular Canvas students going to see this view changes starting Saturday? Those parents have had ease of grade access to one student at a time with the default C4E view and I'm concerned about the loss of that in the last month of school. I would prefer to have parent's UI stay the course through the end of the year if the student filter in regular Canvas does not also carry over to their view of the Grades screen.

[gharbor]

It would be great if the "view Grades" page was able to be filtered by student in the same way as the main dashboard page.

Currently, as the Beta shows the main dashboard displays a drop down for the different students but as soon as you click on the "View Grades" button it shows all the grades for all the students in on long list (not even grouped by student).

Thanks,

Grant