[Calendar] Multi Day Events

It is a very normal function of calendaring to be able to add events that span multiple days. Please add the ability to have mulit day events in canvas. Instead of just having a start and end time give the ability to also define an end date.

 

86032_Screen Shot 2015-08-08 at 11.34.57 AM.pngScreen Shot 2015-08-08 at 11.34.57 AM.png

Added to Theme

31 Comments
ngee
Community Novice

This should be available for assignments too! Many assignments occur over a period of days and a long bar showing that period of days would help the kids not procrastinate.  Most calendars have this option.

allison
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

I'm hearing a few requests here:

1) Make it more obvious to users that they can extend events across multiple days

2) Include start and end dates in the event creation pop-up

3) If an event has been extended using the UI, make sure that when you edit the event it doesn't revert back

4) Make it possible to display assignments across multiple days on the calendar

We may want to break #4 out into a separate request. I'll ask the Community Team what they think about that.

In the mean time, can you share with me the problems you're seeing students have with the way the calendar currently displays events and assignments?

- Are students forgetting to work on things little by little each day?

- Are you seeing confusion about when things are due?

- What kinds of things are students relying on the calendar for?

- Others?

Thanks for your continued input!

ngee
Community Novice

#4 would be the most incredible improvement. Our old LMS could create assignments that extended across multiple days like “Work on Research Papers Due On Friday”. It created a long bar, and the final day was the due date that correlated with our gradebooks. It meant that we only had to enter the assignment in once. Now, with Canvas, we have to create the assignment for a single due date correlated with our gradebooks. Then, we go back and do the cumbersome task of creating an event, linking all the rubrics and instructions with the event, and then dragging the little event bar because events don’t have an end date in the creation pop-up.

I imagine lots of teachers in K-12 but also in Higher Ed have problems with students not looking ahead on calendars and planning for long term assignments. Creating a long-term assignment bar, as #4 suggests, would help the teachers communicate and the students plan their time better.

Nathaniel Gee

Canvas Community <http://jiveon.jivesoftware.com/mpss/c/ggA/PDcDAA/t.1rp/oa7TsgveSAatONUrYqBd2A/h0/eqhG5v9o4WV1pCmWaB03cdIic4NoL-2FHLMYEZhvofPZ-2Ff2hCt6tvfLbJnyBHCNuIvnoh4X2d3cldayoX6lrz8ew-3D-3D>

Multi Day Events

new comment by Allison Weiss<http://jiveon.jivesoftware.com/mpss/c/ggA/PDcDAA/t.1rp/oa7TsgveSAatONUrYqBd2A/h1/eqhG5v9o4WV1pCmWaB03cdIic4NoL-2FHLMYEZhvofPZ9Mj7QnvmCgAFqwSL0N4VyrOqy5jp1kfjvGf5o1BmUihw-3D-3D> View all comments on this idea<http://jiveon.jivesoftware.com/mpss/c/ggA/PDcDAA/t.1rp/oa7TsgveSAatONUrYqBd2A/h2/eqhG5v9o4WV1pCmWaB03cdIic4NoL-2FHLMYEZhvofPZ9RzJTnsvUjDWvxXUi-2B2luVTNNiTY3zi3aB3IG3tpxt7w-3D-3D>

allison
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Thanks, everyone for your input on this thread. We're starting a technical assessment of the Calendar soon and I know our engineers will be interested in seeing your calendar-related requests. Your ideas and use cases will definitely help us to implement more scalable, flexible, and durable solutions. Currently, it looks like the solution we use today doesn't fully support multi-day events so I will archive this request for the time being. That being said, we're going to keep this use case in mind as we dig deeper into this area of Canvas.

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team
  Idea is currently in Product Radar Learn more about this stage...
sjessen
Community Novice

This is a critical issue at our middle school!  Many teachers use the multi day feature...it helps with visual planning for our middle schoolers...a start and end date is NOT sufficient.  If it's not on "today" they don't think it is homework.  Worse, we just got all our kids and parents transitioned to the Canvas app which doesn't support this feature.  In fact it DOES NOT SHOW any multi day post...it simply DISAPPEARS off the calendar.   This is horrible!  Students check their phone, it doesn't show any assignment (because if it is multi day, it doesn't show AT ALL), they don't do it.   Parents check the app..sure enough the kid doesn't have homework (except they do, it just isn't showing on the calendar).  What is the point of an app calendar that doesn't show multi day events?

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.

cbobb
Community Novice

yes students are not working on assignments over time instead looking at the calendar and saying, I don't have any assignments today, it's not due until three days from now! It also helps with parents as they also view the calendar and are not in class. Therefore, they may see a week with nothing on the calendar and wonder what is going on in class. 

keya_smith-warn
Community Novice

Ideally, we would be able to set individual start and end times for multi-day events as well. We use Canvas as a supporting tool for our online school, which has multiple onsites throughout the course. I would like to be able to denote the start and end time of our multi-day onsites, so they are reflected in the syllabus (as one single event, spanning multiple days, with different beginning and end times).

cbobb
Community Novice

I realize this is about events, but this would be helpful for assignments as well. When I start a project I would like for that to appear over multiple days and not just on one day when it is due or when we start it. Currently use multi day events to force the assignment to appear over the course of a week or so.