Review/Check Settings Prompt as an Option - New Assignments, Discussions, + (toggle)

[mcmaguire]

Despite several years of experience with Canvas LMS, there remain (for me) occasions when I mess up, and the corrections can be tedious & inefficient.  For me, common areas for mistakes are with the settings I use for common functions - setting up new Assignments, Discussions and more. 

To assist, I would find it helpful if, before "Saving" a newly-created Assignment, Discussion, etc., when I hit save, I received a prompt that indicates a message like, "be sure to check these frequently-missed items:" - followed by items - per Assignment or Discussion, etc. - that truly reflect the Canvas user community's experiences setting up these course components.

Also important:  for efficient, advanced, regular Canvas users, this "Review/Check" feature could be provided in the main course set-up menu as a "toggle on"/"toggle off" option.  I want to defer to those folks for whom these frequent mistakes are not an issue!

Here's how this might work for me with one of my frequent mistakes when setting up Discussions: 

• In large-enrollment courses (100-150+), Discussions are a helpful tool - allowing students to connect with smaller groups of classmates over the span of a semester in that course. 
• And, I like to provide differently-populated Discussions in such a course - perhaps the nature of the prompts allow for all-class sharing.  Or, perhaps some topics lend themselves to the smaller Groups (8-10 students).
• When setting up a Discussion, I can overlook the check box, "This is a Group Discussion."
• As folks know, if students have submitted posts to one of these Discussions, this setting cannot be changed.  I have to clean up that little mess - hence, my reference (above) to the tedious & inefficient corrections.
• However, if, when setting up the Discussion, I hit, "Save" and I received a prompt to Review or Check the Discussion - even if generic (e.g., "are your settings for this Discussion accurate?") - I'd go back to see whether or not I did something like check the box for, "This is a Group Discussion."

Again, this feature would only be for other members of the Lead Pencil Society and me 🙂  In your course set up, you could simply have this toggled "off" if these mistakes aren't that frequent for you.

Hand-holding?  Maybe.  And, I'm a frequent Canvas user, so I thought I'd put it out there, in case others may find this useful (or have different suggestions for me!).

Thanks, Michael Maguire - Faculty Associate, UW-Madison School of Human Ecology

[mcmaguire]

And, by "save," I mean "publish."  While I can save it without publishing, I wont' get to test it from Student View unless it's published (which I've always thought was another quirky deal).  mm

[delia]

yes! please add a warning and for all assignments AND Calendar. The toggle setting would be great for those that dont want the feature. 

Or at the very least in the details SHOW that groups was selected - I get uneasy having to edit an assignment or Discussion - just to see if I clicked the button or not. 

And please add something similar for using the Scheduler -> Appointment Group - wanting the appointments to meet with the whole student group / team.
I often forget to when I select which course Calendar to click the "Have students sign up in groups." 

And then once made - I might think, did I forget? or not?  There isnt really a way to see if the box was checked. When one clicks Group details (of the appointment) to see, it shows which course Calendar was selected but not whether "Have students sign up in groups" was checked or not.  TIP: A trick a Canvas Support staff told me was to click "Message Students" - they appear as "Groups" if it was checked when the appointment group was made. 

[ProductPanda]

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