Show more classes in Calendar

(7)
This request is to allow additional classes to be shown in the calendar view. Right now, with a cap of only 10, it is not possible to have the calendar show all classes from all terms. Our terms are consecutive (for example, a term ends at the end of September, with a new term starting at the beginning of October). For faculty and students to have a complete picture of the schedule from one week to the next, they need to ability to view at least 14-16 courses on the calendar at a time. This is also useful when building the course calendar, so that there is not a constant need to change which courses are selected to be visible. Having this option will not increase clutter for anyone (because they can choose to select only the number of calendars they want to see), and will greatly increase usability for those who need to see additional calendars.
66 Comments
kmeeusen
Community Champion

If memory serves me right, there was a feature request three years ago to find a way to limit the numbers of courses displayed in the calendar, and the current status is the result of that feature being acted upon by Instructure!

ggd356
Community Novice

We just moved to Canvas. My idea is to allow users to select any calendars they want to display. We have 6-7 classes every term and can't even see 2 terms worth of classes. However, if others want to display fewer calendars, they can just select fewer (I'm not sure why there needs to be a limit of 10 when anyone can just opt to show the ones they want to see).

biray
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Thank you for your submission, ggd356​. I think this may have to do with not cluttering the user-interface. However, would you mind expanding on this idea further by adding a use-case scenario? Why would it be necessary to view two terms worth of classes simultaneously? Perhaps some additional insight will prove helpful in putting this idea into greater context. Smiley Happy

Looking forward to your feedback.

jill_weddle
Community Novice

Hi Biray,

Our students have up to 16 required courses in Canvas per semester, and they would like to be able to see all of their upcoming assignments at once. Perhaps the default view could include 10 courses but also allow students to select more classes if they want.

biray
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Thank you for your clarification  @jill_weddle ​.

Just curious: if a student pulls the calendar feed into, say, a google calendar (How do I subscribe to the Calendar Feed using Google Calendar?​) will all 16 courses show up there?

Renee_Carney
Community Team
Community Team

You're idea will open for voting in September.  Please do test the work-around Biray recommended and let us know if it works.

ggd356
Community Novice

I can see additional courses in Outlook (not sure about google), but our students, for the most part, do not have Outlook. From my end, I still can't edit them conveniently if I can't see them all in Canvas at the same time.

keastin
Community Novice

I would very much like to see this feature also.  I am a teacher, but I am also the parent of two children in our school.  I cannot view my classes as well as their classes.  It would actually be nice it there was a way to toggle between the views of the kids, but as it is everything shows up in my calendar altogether.  That is fine, I have color-coded both of my kids, but I cannot see all of the classes for them and for me as I am only limited to 10.  Since we can choose which classes to include anyway, it seems like it would be a no-brainer to let us choose all that are available or just some according to our preference.  Thanks for considering!

biray
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Ah, that's an interesting point  @keastin ​. I hadn't thought about teachers who were also observers of their students (kids) within the same Canvas instance. That would be a lot of course calendars! Smiley Happy

jordan
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

This idea is now open for voting! 😉

emily
Community Champion

ALL courses show up in an iCal feed. This can be good or bad, depending on your point of view. Also, it's unclear why some of the "Details" show up for, say, an event (like a class) but do not show up for Assignments.

emily
Community Champion

Our students take about 12-13 courses per semester, so we are in exactly the same situation - they can't ever see all their courses at once on the Canvas calendar.

ngee
Community Novice

Yes.  Our parent/teachers are overwhelmed with courses. Why not also have a button "turn on all"  and "turn off all" so that users don't have to scroll through the whole list to see which ones they still have on or off.  Just turn them all off and start clean with the ones they need to see first.

hpalmersheim
Community Novice

Kelly,

We have heard the same concern from some of our parents.  We use Canvas K-12 so if they have a couple of students in the district all of the calendars are not accessible at once.  And in that same respect it can be difficult to keep the different students courses straight as there isn't an indication of which belongs to who.

asito100
Community Novice

This would be a really helpful change. I really like the idea of the calendars, but since it doesn't show all my classes, there's really no point for me to use them.

allison
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

For the voters on this thread, can you give me a sense whether this is more a problem for parents (observers), for students, or for teachers? If it's a problem for parents, we could potentially look at hiding courses for the students they observe by default. If that sounds interesting to you, let us know. We might want to create a new idea just for that.

I'd also like to learn more about the the consequences of not showing more than 10 courses for each of our users. If students can't see more than 10 courses, what does that mean for their educational experience? Invoking the power of your real-life stories here, so feel free to elaborate!

I'd love to know the same thing for parents and for teachers. What kinds of problems do they run up against with this 10-course limitation in place?

Thanks all. Your ideas and the stories around them really do help us make better product decisions.

eirik_kaasa_eli
Community Novice

First of all, a great idea! Thanks, ggd356​.

For me, this is first and foremost a planning issue. In our school, students from different classes and levels often collaborate on joint projects. Consequently, I have to allocate the same teachers to different classes, across the boundries of classes and levels. It would be great to be able to see if the teachers I plan to book are already assigned to another calendar-event. Otherwise, I have to check every course-calendar separately, before I can schedule an activity. This would go both ways, as every teacher should be able to see the activities of the rest of the faculty. Also, it would be great to be able to make a request to book a teacher who then could accept or decline that request. Thanks a lot!

ngee
Community Novice

The problem with only showing ten courses is that it creates an organizational challenge: each time they go to their calendar, they have to scroll through the little window and make sure that the calendars they want to see are on. Many of my students don’t do this carefully, and they assume that a calendar is on when it might be one of the ones at the bottom of their list and they don’t realize that they turned it off the last time they were using it. That’s why we need several ways to organize this list. First, an “all on” or “all off button” would create a clean slate users could use during each session instead of going through and clicking calendars on and off. Then, it would be even better if users could arrange their calendars into categories, not just alphabetically, like “clubs” “sports” “academics” and then turn whole categories of calendars on and off.

Nathaniel Gee

ngee
Community Novice

The problem is that users have to scroll through the entire list of calendars each time to remember which ten they have turned on or off. Since courses are arranged alphabetically, “World History” is at the bottom, and students might not remember that they have it turned off. So, they look at their homework but they miss one class. Therefore, the only way to do this best is to comb through the list carefully making sure that essential Academic Courses are checked on each time a student uses the calendar as a planning session. Obviously, a lot of students don’t have this organizational attention to detail.

Two improvements would fix this: an “all on/off” button would create the ability for students to create a clean slate when looking at their calendar. Then, they could click on or off classes.

Also, being able to categorize groups of courses “Sports, Clubs, Academics, Groups” and then be able to turn on or off each category at once would be an excellent organizational tool.

Nathaniel Gee

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Show more classes in Calendar

new comment by Allison Weiss<http://jiveon.jivesoftware.com/mpss/c/ggA/PDcDAA/t.1rp/Ju6-2dPOQ3u90JhscPQfWQ/h1/eqhG5v9o4WV1pCmWaB03cdIic4NoL-2FHLMYEZhvofPZ9Mj7QnvmCgAFqwSL0N4VyrOqy5jp1kfjvGf5o1BmUihw-3D-3D> View all comments on this idea<http://jiveon.jivesoftware.com/mpss/c/ggA/PDcDAA/t.1rp/Ju6-2dPOQ3u90JhscPQfWQ/h2/eqhG5v9o4WV1pCmWaB03cdIic4NoL-2FHLMYEZhvofPZ9paiJlYQtyoKJotou4oAmxR981CWJQCayM8ya830DRAA-3D-3D>

mark_wittervan
Community Member

We have the same problem of too many courses, our students will normally enrol in 8-10 courses per year, but we continue to give access to old courses, so if you have been here for a number of years the course number is large for students.  For Faculty it gets unusable very quickly as we create a new course each time it is run. I would be great to have a way for course that are currently running or about to run to be at the top of list.  Could the term dates be used?