Fix mastery paths so that edits can be made
Mistakes happen. The fact that the engineers have bugs to fix is already evidence of that! Teachers make them, too!
Having talked with multiple support representatives, it's clear that whoever designed Mastery Paths had one path in mind: 1. Make the entire course. 2. Set all mastery paths. 3. Publish the course. 4. Never touch it again!
You can see more details about this process here: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-use-MasteryPaths-in-course-modules/ta-p...
Note this line that support technicians have quoted to me several times: "When creating MasteryPaths, source assignments and all differentiated course items should be created, and differentiated items should be designated as conditional items before publishing the course."
I don't know how many school teachers have an entire course ready to go before they need to use it. I was never that kind of teacher and I doubt any other teachers were like that. So just about every teacher will fail to accomplish this. It is bad practice to create something that only works correctly if you set it up the ONE chance you get and then they just tell you that you did it wrong when something goes wrong. We need something better.
Second, how often do people run into a situation where they're like, "Oh, I wish I had included this?" It happens all the time for me. Or perhaps you THOUGHT that you had set things up correctly, but you missed just one setting, or entered one wrong number. Well, editing ANYTHING within the mastery path, at least according to the technicians, means that the development team are not responsible to fix the problem because you didn't follow the instructions and make sure that it was all done before you published the course. We aren't perfect. We need something better.
Third, even when it is set up, there are still bugs in the system. I can't tell you how many times I've run into a situation where the student has submitted an assignment and it won't let them move on. Tech support gives me the same suggestion: "Just change their grade and it will fix itself." This solution, which is effective, but avoids the obvious solution: Fix the software. So instead, tech support receives thousands of requests for help instead of fixing the issue that's increasing their work load. We need something better.
The caveat seems to be more of a cop-out to not fix the software. It makes the teacher responsible for why everything is wrong and shifts the blame away from the developer. I don't think that's fair at all!
These bugs need to be fixed!
Edit: removed my outbursts.
You must be a registered user to add a comment. If you've already registered, sign in. Otherwise, register and sign in.
