Community

I also support this idea. I would like to clarify/add one additional use for this. Perhaps someone can correct me if I am wrong. As I understand it, commons allows me to import material that has been shared. Once I import it, that material is part of my course and is not directly tied to the original commons material? There are times when I would like to share/import a document where changes to the master are automatically reflected in the shared locations. For example, an admin in my department could keep an updated page on common policies: holidays, disability accommodations, etc. I or any other instructor could then include a link to this document in our syllabus. This would require the permalink to be accessible to users. ... View more

Thanks, You know, if only I could read I guess I could answer my own questions (grin). I appreciate you pointing it out to me. I must have missed that one in the flurry of posts, Michael ... View more

I see that this is marked Archived. Does that mean that it failed the vote process? Or just that it is waiting for next steps? As the original idea creator, I am happy that it received such a great workaround and 193 votes. However, since this workaround is not actually part of Canvas my institution does not support it (does not allow tokens for security reasons). Does the community still feel a need for this, or is the perception that the workaround solves the problem? p.s. I would argue that active community members are a bit more adventurous than average. I mean no slight to the excellent work that has already been done. However, I suspect a solution that is 'baked-in' to Canvas would be more accessible to more instructors. ... View more

Deactivated user​ in response to your question: " How does date adjustment during the course import process not meet these needs?" I can offer several scenarios. 1) Importing my spring course into a six week summer course. 2) Importing spring or summer into fall. During the fall I have a labor day holiday and class the first Monday of Thanksgiving. This requires me to shift dates forward. Furthermore, I don't just move everything forward by one session. For example, the Monday of Thanksgiving will be low attendance so I want to be careful what I schedule for that day. 3) Snow days or other problems may mean that I need reconfigure many of the days for part of the semester. 4) Once I have rescheduled a bunch of snow or other days, the calendar can no longer be copied to future semesters because it is all a mess. 5) I am constantly tweaking course design. Each section has a series of mini-tests followed by an exam. I had each minitest due date and until date the same. Then I tried making the until date two days after the due date. I am now testing another change. 6) I usually change content between semesters. If I introduce a new assignment I want it to fit a specific point within the other assignments/quizzes. Even if I am only making one addition it is useful to see this in context of all of the other dates of the course. 7) I have many settings I want to make: due dates, until dates, hide answers until due date, hide answers after a certain date. With many assignments it is easy for me to overlook one of the settings. If I can see it all on the same page, it is easier for me to do a final review and make sure that dates are set. Further, these will all have ripple effects. A little change on one item or a single snow day may change the entire semester. Bottom line is that each semester is never a duplicate of a previous semester. As it is I can adjust a single entry, but I have no facility to manage the overall course. Michael p.s. This isn't the only area that I could use bulk editing tools. It's just the most obvious. Here are two more examples: 1) As another example, it would be useful to have one screen that shows a tree structure with the categories and the assignments in each category and the weights for each category and the points for each assignment. Then I could drag and drop between categories and change weighting and points for all assignments in one place. Again this gives me the ability to manage in the context of the entire course. Like this: Category 1: 45%      Assign1: 20pts      Assign2: 25pts Category 2: 55%      Assign3: 50pts      Assign4: 5pts 2) As a quicker way of entering quiz questions support markup. In my previous system, I could create an entire set of questions in the following format and import all of the at once -- its a lot quicker than going through fields for each question/answer. Example: 1. (1 points) This is the first question a. This is a wrong answer *b. This is a right answer c. Another wrong answer 2. (1 points) This is the second question *a. The right answer b. Not this answer ... View more

Well, I have had the answer from my university for now. They have locked down access to tokens because they don't want someone doing something locally that might expose private user data. The bottom line is that I can't use the wonderful spreadsheet that  @James ​ developed. So, first I must say thank you to James and I'm happy he has helped so many of you. From my point of view I hope he has speeded up the development process by offering a prototype of the functionality. Finally, I am asking each of you to vote and have your friends vote so I can see this feature delivered as part of the system. [grin]. Thx Michael ... View more

I think its something from my university. When I click on get access token, I have to fill out a form. On the form it says that this token is for my university's instance of Canvas. I'm guessing they've implemented an approval process as a security feature to lockdown canvas??? ... View more

James, I can't use this yet, because I'm waiting for a token. I suspect I will have to wait until after the weekend. Anyway, while I was waiting I was looking at your code and one additional idea occurred to me. Part of your code reads:    if (!matched) {     throw 'You are trying to replace a quiz/assignment that is not in the system. Look for Canvas Id: '       + canvasId       + ' in row '       + (i + 1)       + ' of the spreadsheet.';    } It would be cool if you could create an assignment if it appeared to be a new (non-matching) assignment. This would let you quickly create a shell for a course by adding in 10 assignments at once. I recognize that this could become a big programming issue if you were to code for full assignment creation with description, submission type, etcetera. Keeping it simple, it would be useful to just be able to layout ten assignments and their dates and then to go into Canvas to flesh out details for each. I know how busy you are. If you don't have time to look at this, then I may take a look at it week after next. Unfortunately, I'm not a programmer, just a fumble-fingered hacker, but I may try to work from your code to do something. Michael ... View more

James, Wow! Thanks for the work. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks great! I'm curious whether it will support another pet peeve of mine -- I guess I will try it and see. I always want to show answers after the quiz has closed. It will be neat if this lets me put a formula into the show answers field to refer to the available until column. I hope the vote total continues to climb so that this gets officially integrated into Canvas. However, it looks like you have delivered a great solution. Michael ... View more

Thanks for the note Lindsay. Yes in general I would like the ability to manage courses in bulk so that I don't have to edit every item individually. It looks to me like your idea would be very helpful in this respect. The only addition to your idea (I'm not sure it's in your idea?) would be that I would like to be able to edit as well as view the fields in the expanded view. ... View more