[Assignments] Assigning to Groups of Students: Copy/Paste

When assigning an assignment to multiple groups of students, I would love to be able to simply copy and paste a list of student names into the "assign to" field.    I can not create separate sections because it breaks our SIS sync, so currently I must manually type in 25-30 student names for every assignment that gets assigned in this way.  

Being able to input these names using a .csv or some other format would also be appreciated. 

 

 

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7 Comments
Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Open
 
Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

@jim_shaffer1 

Thanks for sharing this idea. You'll probably want to support this closely-related idea, Differentiate Assignments,  as well.

megande
Community Member

Yes! I was just trying to look up a way to do this and I'm sad that it's not currently possible.

Each class section I have is split into 2 subgroups by alphabet so only half the students attend in person each day but they're not split that way in Canvas. If I want the due dates to be correct I would need to manually type the student names but having to do that for all 135 names divided into 4 different subgroups is not worth the time or effort so I usually just make one due date later in the week. This has caused some issue with things like students not having their practice test done before taking the test in class because they didn't realize they were supposed to because of the due date.

This would also make differentiation easier for teacher who assign things a little differently based on student needs!!

kristins
Community Novice

@Stef_retired 

Something I feel would be a great benefit to teachers would be to allow us to more easily unmark students when we are assigning assignments. 

When you go to assign something. It defaults to say Everyone. While I love that, what is frustrating, is I have quite a few students who are doing Home Study and I don't want them to be assigned that particular assignment. These students are still listed in our classes, but are just choosing to do the work at home.

It would be nice to be able to click on the word "everyone" and see every students name pop up with a little X next to it. So we can just go through the list and uncheck the kids we don't want listed. 

Currently the only option is to delete the word everyone and hand type in every students name, leaving out the ones I don't want.  I am spending 45 minutes to an hour completing this task for my classes. 

I did speak to someone who said suggested I put the Home Study kids in their own group to assign things more easily. However we have discovered that using groups actually causes our grades not to sync with the grading system our district uses. 

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

@kristins What you've described is the topic of a long-standing conversation at Assign to everyone except selected students - Canvas Community so please add your rating to that idea as well. Thanks.

KristinL
Community Team
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KristinL
Community Team
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