Allow folders in Pages

(257)

The Files section of Canvas allows folders for organizing files. Pages does not. Why the awful inconsistency in the user interface? I currently have 30+ pages that I've created in - all in flat directory structure. I'd like to be able to organize them, you know, like Files and stuff I have on my computer.

 
Comments from Instructure

Please refer to the update from the product team here

406 Comments
laurakgibbs
Community Champion

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scottdennis
Instructure
Instructure

I didn't know about either, Laura.  Thank you.

walter_halil
Community Explorer

I'm thinking that you could probably eliminate the "Files" page altogether set up Canvas to be able to perform all of the necessary file management actions when you are in the edit page. This way the user doesn't have to exit the edit page to perform any file management. This would be a great time saver, and would simplify working with Canvas overall.

deppeler
Community Explorer

Still not currently planned.  What gives?  It should have been there from the start.  Smiley Sad

sbailey
Community Participant

Love the idea.

matthewthomas
Community Participant

This would be such a help in navigating our content pages. In some courses, I have 100+ pages, and scrolling through to find the correct one is tedious. Even though they are alphabetized, sometimes I don't remember exactly how I titled a page, so I still have trouble finding it. Folders would help greatly with that.

While on the subject of navigating pages, When importing selected content from another Canvas course, the content pages are NOT alphabetized; in fact, I haven't been able to determine any order to their presentation. This makes it extremely difficult to import selected pages into a course. For context, I teach some courses that overlap in content (e.g., different modalities of language courses), so the ability to combine resources from multiple sites is often necessary.

ekc13b
Community Novice

 @kmeeusen ‌
I completely agree with you. Our Institution tries to steer our instructors to use Modules over Pages or Files to host their course libraries. Implementing this feature will just cause a lot of confusion. I propose this Idea as an alternative: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/4636-modules-within-modules 

james_neill
Community Participant

This suggestion is a no-brainer - i.e., so obviously needed.

hasti
Community Champion

Just to be completely clear: my proposal (to allow folders within Pages) has nothing to do with students and everything to do with the way instructors are able to organize their course materials for their own use (like in the Files section).

I am completely on board with not making Pages or Files visible to students and using Modules as the way that students interact with the course. But what I need is a way for the hundred or so pages I have for my course to be able to be organized (and, hopefully, as a result make it easier for Canvas to display listings of pages - less waiting for Canvas to load the next chunk of page titles).

laurakgibbs
Community Champion

I really hope we will see progress on this (it looks like a primo candidate for Project Khaki if Instructure does that again in the spring).

The mismatch between having that feature available in Files and not available in Pages suggests to me that a big re-think of content management is required, but having Folders in Pages would certainly be a big help to people trying to cope in the meantime.

kbeachy
Community Novice

When can we see this feature?  

kbeachy
Community Novice

Horrors, Emily!  That would make Canvas as easy to use as Blackboard, and we certainly cannot have that!  :smileycool:

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

The "Radar‌ idea stage has been removed from the Feature Idea Process.  You can read more about why in the blog post Adaptation: Feature Idea Process Changes.

This change will only impact the stage sort of this idea and will not change how it is voted on or how it is considered during prioritization activities.  This change will streamline the list of ideas 'open for voting', making it easier for you to see the true top voted ideas in one sort, here.

bryan_biggers
Community Participant

Agreeing with Kelley that this is a counterproductive idea and voting this down. Faculty might start developing their courses in Pages, which would make things more difficult for students and create an inconsistent experience. Please devote resources to ideas more universally-recognized as helpful.

laurakgibbs
Community Champion

Please don't assume you know what is best for all faculty and all courses. It's quite alright if you want to share your opinion about design practices, but to assume that yours is the only right approach to design does not make sense, especially in as wide-ranging a user community as we have here.

SHEBENE
Community Champion

I tend to think that these comment sections are all about expressing what we think is best for students and it should be understood that it's our opinion about what's best for our students. Civil debate is what fuels innovation and hones ideas to ninja-like sharpness.

hasti
Community Champion

Do you teach? How big are your classes? What level? How many TAs do you have to coordinate with? How many pages of content do your Canvas courses contain? Do you have to re-use your course and/or share it with colleagues who are taking it over after you?

Just to be completely clear: my proposal (to allow folders within Pages) has nothing to do with students and everything to do with the way instructors are able to organize their course materials for their own use (like in the Files section).

 

I am completely on board with not making Pages or Files visible to students and using Modules as the way that students interact with the course. But what I need is a way for the hundred or so pages I have for my course to be able to be organized (and, hopefully, as a result make it easier for Canvas to display listings of pages - less waiting for Canvas to load the next chunk of page titles).

Since you think it is so important to prevent some hypothetical faculty member from using Canvas to interact with students in a way you don't like that you want to prevent everyone from using folders to organize their pages (even privately), what do you propose as a mechanism for the instructors of a course to organize and manage the content they create in Canvas?

Are you also going to be creating your own idea for Canvas to remove folders from the Files section (after all, someone could use that to make their own course just as easily as pages)?

What are examples of ideas you think are more universally-recognized?

Have you gone around and down voted other ideas because they are not "universally-recognized"?

laurakgibbs
Community Champion

And I would say "universally recognized" is not something anybody can lay claim to when it comes to course design or LMS features.

After all, there are still some flat-earthers out there. 🙂

laurakgibbs
Community Champion

And as I've said elsewhere, what is really valuable here is not the voting, up or down, but the use-cases that emerge in the discussions. There are clearly a lot of good examples in this discussion of the reasons why people think that folders-in-pages would help them to do their jobs better. 

One of the main sermons I preach to my students is the importance of FOLDERS (or LABELS, depending on the software), whatever it takes to bring chaos to our digital lives: documents, email, bookmarks, blog posts... it all benefits from being organized. One of my students recently wrote in her blog recently about how it rocked her world to learn that she could put folders in her bookmarks bar to organize her bookmarks in folders. 🙂

I'm not going to call it universal, but I think that those of us who get used to using folders expect to be able to use them for all the content we manage. I know I do.

wendy_fletcher
Community Novice

I too would like a folder system to file and organise materials, when you have a long (and growing...)list of pages or assignments it takes ages for them to load, as people have already said they load in batches and you have to sit and wait for the next batch..and the next..time that could be better spent elsewhere. I quite understand how the module system works in Higher Education BUT Canvas is also used with young students, some of mine are 4 and 5 years old. I do not want them scrolling through modules I want them to follow my simple navigation structures. In my situation folders would be very, very handy, not for students working independently, for me to organise efficiently behind the scenes. .