Course Format in SIS Import

[John_Lowe]

  This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

  Idea open for vote Wed. April 6, 2016 - Wed. July 6, 2016  Learn more about voting...

In light of the new option to allow courses to have a format of "Blended" (see https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-6332#jive_content_id_Course_Settings), it would be incredibly helpful for this course format field to be available as an option within the SIS Import format for the courses.csv file.  At the present time, this field can only be set through the GUI or through a separate API call to add this field to a course that already exists, but it cannot be set during course creation through the SIS Import process.  This feature request would allow this format flag to be set during course creation through the existing SIS Import process.

The SIS Import format could look something like this with options for on-campus, online, blended:

course_id,short_name,long_name,account_id,term_id,status,format,start_date,end_date


  Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the Canvas Production Release Notes (2016-09-17)

[John_Lowe]

Dear Instructure Product Development Team,

     If you are able to implement this feature request, and you would like to make this course format even *more* useful, please see the following discussion which has some GREAT comments about the admin panel and a simple-to-use, multi-criteria course search -- which a literal genius suggested could use course format as a search criteria.

I would like more control of the Admin Menu.

Sincerely,

Your Biggest Fans

[John_Lowe]

[Sylvia_Ami]

Thank you  @John_Lowe ​ for letting me know about this. Maybe this has already been discussed, but I just wanted to make sure that if the format filed was included in the SIS import, the default value will always be set at "not-set." I just don't want any surprises.

Also, have you heard from anyone about adding more values besides: not-set, online, on-campus, and blended?  Our college has theses formats plus a few more: telecourse, cable, independent study, and some other "offline" type courses for our students in military programs. We could just use the "blended" value but it would be nice to have an "other" choice. Or maybe we will just use the "not-set" option.  I'm interested in hearing what other schools use.

[John_Lowe]

Hi,  @Sylvia_Ami ​.  I agree 100%.  I was afraid my request wasn't clear enough originally, so my first comment in this discussion was to clarify this point.  We have no control over how (or even if) Instructure implements this request, but if they follow my request and this discussion, the default option will remain as "not set" -- exactly like it is right now for those schools who may not want to make any SIS changes or want to set this flag at all.  It should *definitely* be an optional field (like the start and end dates for example) which would not harm or interfere with anyone's existing process if they are not set.

This request is more about consistency across the GUI, API, and SIS Import processes than anything else.  I'd like to see this course setting that exists in the GUI and in the API be available for batch use via the SIS Import process as well.  Regardless if they keep just the existing three format options or add some of the other great format suggestions you provided, make those format options (whatever they are at the time) consistent and available in the SIS Import process when courses are created.  If they add new course formats like they did when they added "blended" this spring, they should make sure that those new formats can also be set during the course creation process. 

Right now, you can create thousands of courses at one time through the SIS Import process and set all the major course settings like status and start/end dates with one CSV file, but if you want to set the course format, you have to change that setting one course at a time.  And *that* seems like an oversight that should be corrected by this feature request.

[gschultz]

Josh,

I hope you don't mind, but I want to plug my topic to vote on for admins out there.  I trying to get votes for a notification report on SIS imports, but as I mentioned earlier it is difficult for admin items to get votes, since there fewer of us than instructors.

Please help pass the word.  ​

I would appreciate the help from other admins to get us some addition tools.

[John_Lowe]

Absolutely, Greg!  I'll gladly vote for anything that makes much needed improvements to the Canvas Admin side of things. 

[John_Lowe]

 @gschultz ​, you should also post a link to your request here:

Top Two Most Important Feature Ideas/Bugs/Issues for Canvas Admins

and share it with the Canvas Admins​ group.

[gschultz]

Thanks  @John_Lowe ​.  I am pretty new to this and appreciate all the help.

[John_Lowe]

Any time, Greg!  I'm all about having free and open discussions where we can all share ideas with each other and provide input to Instructure!  Normally, the community is great about having this sort of open and transparent discussion.

[scottdennis]

Hi All,

Look for another update to progress on this one in June or July.

Thanks,

SD