Help Us Fine-Tune Differentiation Tags: Your Feedback Matters!

[SamGarza1]

We’re excited to introduce a new feature we're working on called Differentiation Tags, and we’d love your input to make it the best it can be! Differentiation Tags will allow instructors to categorize and tailor content for specific groups of students, making it easier to customize learning experiences.

We’ve set up a Maze survey that will show you one of two prototypes we’re testing. The interactive survey should take about 15 minutes to complete, and your insights will play a crucial role in shaping this feature. Please note that during the survey, your screen and microphone will be recorded to help us better understand your experience.

Maze survey can be found here: https://t.maze.co/311508919 

By participating, you’ll be directly contributing to how Differentiation Tags evolve, and we appreciate every bit of feedback you share.

Thank you for helping us create a more intuitive and impactful experience for all users!

[dkpst5]

Maze rarely works in the best of times, and this one is asking for microphone and screen recording permissions for undeclared reasons on top of that. Hopefully you can get some data out of it.

[james_whalley]

@SamGarza1 The microphone and screen recording part does seem a bit much. It kind of forces a user to sit down and get through the whole thing without any chance of interruption (which folks may find hard to prioritize). I personally would prefer to have a 15 minute meeting with you. That way, you don't read anything into a recorded reaction and can have a discussion with me to fully understand.

[mmoore1]

I did not mind, and I found the experience useful.  I am not sure about the name "differentiation tag".  There might be an easier name to use. 

[audra_agnelly]

I didn't have any issue with Maze, but it was not clear how to proceed to the questions after watching the Inbox video. If I recall correctly, I hit the End Task button but was hesitant to do so since I wasn't sure if that would boot me out of the whole thing. It would help to add some addtional information in the directions for this piece.

Otherwise, I am really excited to see some traction with the feature and was generally pleased with the prototype. We've been begging Instructure for this capability for years!

[stimme]

I completed the survey and found the chance to weigh again welcome. My feeling about the mandatory mic & screen recording to participate is extremely negative. Please find a way to make that optional in the future, @SamGarza1 . I am excited about the progress you are making on this feature!

[cthomas5]

Maze kept freezing, so I gave up on this survey. Is there another way we can weigh in on this feature?

[embleton]

Seems like an interesting feature. I am wondering how "deep" the tags can be used.

- can they be applied to Group Sets? Individual Group? to Sections?

- can you use the differentiation tag for setting up Assign To rules? (e.g. assign quiz to peopple who had Tag A)

The Maze tool booted me out but I think I was done by then.

[tobe_baeyens]

Unfortunately the maze tool crashed in the second part of the survey.

[jbelliotti]

Will these tags affect any settings? For example, if we set up a tag that student has ADA accommodations that allow 1.5x normal test taking time, would the assignment reflect this, or is it simply a notification to the teacher to set that up in assignment settings?  Will institutions be able to customize their own tags or will they be standardized for all Canvas institutions?

[valentinesking]

A rose by any other name...

The maze tool worked well, though I was surprised by the audio recording part; the screen recording was understandable. Was a bit confused when watching the emailing recording that I needed to click on "end task" to continue.

Just call it collaborative groups and differentiation groups, since they are basically the same function. We can inform of our users of the new functionality and names through interactions/trainings.

Thanks for sharing the prototype.

[Kakapo]

How can the self-sign up be added to a Module so it can be opened and closed at a certain time and restricted to a section?

How do students sign up to a group that acts like a section and can then be assigned to that group/section?

[jorgen_ivarsson]

Hi @SamGarza1!

I guess this was just a sneak peek into the function of tags. But already there are some problematic things to note. The first is the user interface for creating/selecting tags. Why the variants function? This is messing up the user interface. It is not clear what a "variant" is or why you would need it. It is like your development team has gone three steps ahead when you have just started. Just let us create one or more tags. Just that. Don't complicate something that does not need to be complicated.

First wish: Remove the variants function from the popup. If users demand it, you can always bring it back in two years' time (but my guess is that no one will ask for it).

Second wish: It seems that you can only assign one tag to a student. Even though I like the "smart" assign process in this example (where two students were not selected and everybody else was selected for the second tag), it won't be long before you need that particular student in another tag (group). I think that a student should be able to belong to more than one tag (just as a student can belong to several groups in a course).

This was some critique (you asked for it), but I also want to say that this is a really needed function in Canvas! Keep going!

[susanna_bjorver]

Hi,

Sorry, as a EU citizen, allowing screen sharing and microphone to a cloud based US app in a situation where the recent firing of so many PCLOB staff has rendered the board unable to make a legal decision and to perform its role to protect me, is a complete show stopper.

Differentiation tags seems interesting, but unfortunately I cannot move forward.

[SamGarza1]

Thank you all for taking the time to look at our Differentiation Tags feature and provide feedback!

Hi @Kakapo self sign-up functionality will not be part of our MVP of this feature. We are keeping it in mind and our thought was giving students an opportunity to opt-in to extra resources or sign up for a specific project topic without knowing who the other students associated with the Tag are. It would still be up to the instructor to then assign that Tag to an assignment, module, or other piece of content using Assign To. 

@jorgen_ivarsson For clarity, the two use case we've been keeping in mind is needing a standalone Tag, such as Honors, Visual Learner, or Athlete, and needing a Tag with variants to split students but still indicate that the Tag variants are related to each other. An example of this would be a Tag set of Final Essay with the variants Topic A, Topic B, Topic C. 

You'll be able to assign multiple standalone Tags to a student; it's only the Tag variants where students can only be assigned to one in the Tag set. We're also looking at ways we can improve the overall management of Tags and ensure it's practical to use in large courses.

We're testing this with some institutions and instructors over the next couple of weeks to gather feedback and ensure the usability of the feature, and will post an update in Community after sharing what we learned. Glad that you're excited about this functionality!

Hi @susanna_bjorver Thank you for sharing this issue with us. We'll keep this in mind when we have new opportunities for testing and collecting feedback.