Student's Name

(1)
Before the interface changed (At the beginning of the school year) a student's name would appear at the top of the screen.  This was a nice easy way to identify a student if you were standing behind them in class.  Would it be possible to add their name under their profile picture?
45 Comments
biray
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Thank you for your submission,  @john_williamson ​. Can you help us with some more context by clarifying where in Canvas you are referencing? Where are you no longer seeing the Student Name?

Looking forward to your feedback. Smiley Happy

kona
Community Champion

In the new UI the students name does not appear anywhere on the screen when they are logged into Canvas. If they submit something their name shows up, but you don't know who is logged into Canvas from any of the main screens. In the past the person logged in had their name at the top of the page.

Side nore, I know there is already a FI for this but I'm on my phone and can't find it right now.

kmeeusen
Community Champion

Biray:

In the old UI, the user's name appeared in the top right menu bar from most everywhere in Canvas except the Grade Book and Speedgrader as shown in the image below.............

173717_pastedImage_0.png

john_williamson
Community Contributor

Biray,

In the old interface you were able to see the student's name at the top of the screen when they were working on their assignments.  In the new interface this is no longer available.  It would be nice if the student's name would appear below  their account picture.   See below in Kelley's post.

173729_pastedImage_0.png

kmeeusen
Community Champion

 @john_williamson ​:

I found this archive Feature Idea that speaks to adding student names to the Dashboard Course Cards, but I think that is intended for K-12 parent observers: Still might be worth checking out @

Agent K

biray
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

85738_pastedImage_0.pngpastedImage_0.png

Thank you for your Feature Idea submission. We wanted to call your attention to   which was submitted in a different voting period, but archived due to lack of votes or inadequate response. You may want to reference this idea for any insight.

Since archived ideas can be re-submission, your idea will be open for vote in the next voting cycle (April 6, 2016).

In the meantime, help your idea gain traction by posting a link to this idea in the comments of the other, archived idea (which will notify author and anyone who is following the idea) and share your idea to colleagues and peers who you think would be supporters, as well.

biray
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

This idea has moved to the next stage and will be open for voting among the Canvas Community, from Wed. April 6, 2016 - Wed. July 6, 2016.

Check out this doc for additional details about how the voting process works!

kharris1186
Community Explorer

This is a need for our online offerings for proctors identifying students to their IDs and Canvas accounts. Also, when we use our monitoring system, it assists in connecting the right students for entering access codes.

john_williamson
Community Contributor

@Kimberley Harris

This idea has moved to the voting stage.  Unfortunately so far is hasn't received much support.  Please feel free to spread the word.  A link below is provided

szabarovska
Community Contributor

 @kenneth_larsen ​

Would it be possible for you to help us tackle this issue? It is a need for our online offerings for proctors identifying students to their IDs and Canvas accounts. Any information would be greatly appreciated.

The name used to be in the top, right corner. It would be great to have it there in the new UI!!

kenneth_larsen
Community Champion

You could add the following to your global JavaScript file. I will caution, however, that longer names may not fit nicely into the left navigation.

if (ENV.current_user.display_name !== undefined) {

    $('#global_nav_profile_link').prepend('<div class="menu-item__text" style="padding: 0 5px 5px;">' + ENV.current_user.display_name + '</div>');

}

This will create something like the following:

Screen Shot 2016-05-10 at 1.39.01 PM.png

szabarovska
Community Contributor

This is fantastic! Thank you!

Could you also provide me any information on how to display the course name and section?

mcowen
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

This is what I use... If you want to replace the word Account with the user name.

Have your Canvas Admin add this to the CSS upload in the Theme Editor (this hides the word 'Account' when the page first loads) :

#global_nav_profile_link .menu-item__text {

  display:none;

}

Then add this to the JavaScript in the Theme Editor (this changes the word 'Account' to the user's name and then shows the user's name):

$(document).ready(function () {

  $(function(){$("#global_nav_profile_link .menu-item__text").text(ENV.current_user.display_name)});

  $("#global_nav_profile_link .menu-item__text").css("display","inherit");

});

Of course, test this thoroughly on your Test or Beta environment and if your Canvas Admin can't understand it, support it and maintain it, then don't use it.

It will create something like this:

183565_pastedImage_11.png

I hope this helps!

PS. - I like Kenneth's line of:

if (ENV.current_user.display_name !== undefined)

There is probably a good way to add that to my code above to verify there is actually a username in Canvas.

szabarovska
Community Contributor

Wonderful! Thank you for sharing!

szabarovska
Community Contributor

Mike,

Since you and  @kenneth_larsen ​ have been so helpful, could you please tell me if there is a way for us to remove the option for students to rename the courses?

mcowen
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Students, by default, can not rename courses.  There is, however, the ability for a student to create a nickname for a course in their dashboard of the new UI. For example the nicknames are in blue and the course names are in black.

183651_pastedImage_0.png

Adding a nickname does not change the name for anyone else, it just changes how that individual student sees the course.

I hope this helps!

szabarovska
Community Contributor

Yes, that is true; however, when students come in to take proctored exams and our proctors have to monitor the students, the nickname shows up at the top instead of the actual course name:

Snip20160511_14.png

And once the student clicks on the course, the nickname follows in the breadcrumbs:

Snip20160511_15.png

We would really like to avoid that situation if any way possible.

mcowen
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

There is not a setting in Canvas to turn off the nicknames for students. You would need to write some CSS or JS to either make the nickname field read-only (using CSS), or force the breadcrumb to use the course name instead of the nickname (using JS.)

You could also submit these as feature ideas promote it to your colleagues to vote it up.

I wish I had a quick-fix for you, perhaps  @kenneth_larsen ​ might chime in...

kenneth_larsen
Community Champion

This one is not very easy and I will admit that I am not much help. The only place the course name appears to be stored in most pages is in the Breadcrumb (which obviously is not the case if they have a nickname). Manipulating the Nickname field using JavaScript is difficult because all of the fields are identified with the same ID allowing JavaScript to only hit the first one. The ideal solution would be a feature flag from Canvas. In it's absence, you could hide the nickname field using CSS (much like Mike suggested):

label[for=NicknameInput], input#NicknameInput {

    display: none;

}

This will, however prevent anyone from changing nicknames that have already been set.

szabarovska
Community Contributor

Kenneth! Smiley Happy

Thank you so much for all your help! :smileycheck: