Community

Agreeing with @mcchauvi here: it isn't okay to have messages still marked as unread until you re-load the page, and it is especially not okay to have the message pop back up as unread after reloading if you manually marked it as read. I may need to sit down and work through 20 messages at a time, and I need to see which ones I've already read and which ones are still waiting, without having to reload the page after every one!  It's February, and it's still happening, so whatever may have rolled out on 15 October didn't fix the problem. ... View more

That would work, technically, but it's also a great way to have 60 students panic and email you about an assignment that they "missed" and didn't even know about, and then stay angry at you for the rest of the semester for stressing them out like that. ... View more

@Chris_Hofer, Honestly, it sounds like your experience has been similar, but your attitude is markedly different; kudos to you for maintaining your optimism! I wish I could be as accepting of this situation: I've submitted several Feature Ideas over the years here in the Community...some of which I've thought would really benefit all Community members.  But yet, they've not gotten much attention.  At the same time, I've had a small handful of my Feature Ideas get implemented in Canvas ... ones that I thought would never see the light of day.  So, in those cases, I was pleasantly surprised when those ideas I submitted made it into the core Canvas product...even if they seemed small or didn't seem to get much feedback/votes/star ratings from fellow Community members. But for me, and I suspect for many others in this thread, this is precisely the root of the frustration. Again and again, we upvote, 5-star, or whatever the latest rev is, trying to get really basic functionality problems addressed, and again and again, we see cute little bells and whistles getting implemented while basic functions with wide and deep user support go unaddressed. I would trade any 10 of my "minor tweak" suggestions and every single "improvement" on the community platform for the ability to duplicate quizzes and quiz questions without lengthy, wonky work-arounds! ... View more

Yikes! Yeah, I had always assumed that the general feedback comments would be visible on the date that answers become visible, not immediately upon submission. This makes no sense. If I don't want students to see their answers until the quiz is closed for everybody, why on earth would I want to make my own correct answer explanation available before then? The entire point is to NOT have the correct answers visible before the release date. If you release the "key" upon submission, that defeats the whole purpose of setting a "show correct answers at" date! ... View more

Adding to the chorus: yes, please to both annotation and rubrics on essay questions. It is pretty standard practice to include essay questions on exams, along with other question types, yet it is so very difficult to grade and give feedback on essay questions within a quiz. At the very least the essay type should have a rubric option, but ideally both rubric and annotation options, so that we can refer to specific parts of an answer, make grammar corrections, etc. Grading without feedback is not pedagogically sound or helpful, but right now we have no ability to provide feedback on these questions. ... View more

That flow chart makes me want to cry. And bang my head on my desk. And quit my job.  I came in here with the same question, and I can't say that I understand it any better. I have set my grade posting policy to "manual," but some columns show the "hidden" icon, and others don't. How the heck am I supposed to know whether students can see their grades, and which grades they can see?      And now I'm learning from this thread that the hide/show eye in Speedgrader doesn't do the same thing as it does in the gradebook column??? This is a HOT MESS! I have an exam to grade, and I want to make sure that the students aren't seeing it until I'm done. It's set to "manual," but the gradebook column shows no eye icon, and the Speedgrader shows the open eye icon, both of which would indicate that the grades ARE visible to the students. The "hide" options are grayed out, though, which would imply the opposite. This flow chart is of no use in interpreting the current status. Can they see the grades, or not?  ... View more

Adding my voice to the chorus: "mute" and "unmute" were simple, clear, and intuitive. Now I have no idea what my students are seeing, and even though I have the assignment set to "manual" and haven't posted the grades, I still get the non-crossed-out eyeball icon, which would indicate that the grades are visible!   This is super nerve-wracking. And even more so, given that time and energy went into this "improvement" of a working function, while we still can't duplicate quiz questions. There are still very fundamental functions flat-out missing from Canvas, but efforts are being prioritized towards re-making things that already exist and work reasonably well!   ... View more

This has been annoying me for years. Some questions show up in apparent-12-point and some in apparent-10-point, and still others (aaaaarrrrghh!!!) switch back and forth within the question! All of this without me ever setting a font size while writing my questions. It looks terrible, and takes way too much time to fix. ... View more

Even more tedious, given that the interface itself is glitchy. I often have to try 2 or 3 times to enter a section/student, because if I move my cursor down to the drop-down menu too quickly, just as I start to click, the menu disappears and I have to start over. It makes an aggravating process downright stroke-inducing. ... View more

This happened to me last week, too. That we are still struggling with wonky work-arounds for Canvas's inability to copy quizzes (or quiz questions) is beyond ridiculous. This is a basic function, and thousands of instructor hours have been wasted banging our heads against our desks over glitchy "solutions" to what should be as simple as "copy - paste." But somehow there has been time to create yet another set of "badges" to reward us for coming in here and complaining. I got 7 of them last month. Why? I don't know. I have exactly zero use for badges, while ability to copy a quiz is a critical function that I need every week.  🤯 ... View more

This does answer my question, I suppose, but it's very frustrating because the second screenshot is not how I set it up. I did not add multiple assignment windows. I added three sections to a single assignment window (first screenshot), hit save, and Canvas split it into multiple assignment windows upon save. I had it set up as only one. I saved it as only one. And even if Canvas insists on creating duplicate windows, why on earth would the software be intentionally set up to show "multiple dates" when there are in point of fact not multiple dates? Who does that? At least they could have had it show as "multiple sections," which would be no more informative or user-friendly in terms of needing to see our available and due dates, but would be ... honest? accurate? slightly less infuriating? ... View more

That's the thing, though: I did NOT set different times for the different sections. I only filled in a SINGLE "assign to" box, with all three sections in the "assign to" field, so there is no way I could have set them for different times.  It started out like this: And after saving, Canvas reverted to this: ... View more

Thanks, James! It sounds like what I have done will work. I have already made duplicates of the quizzes/assignments for the different assignment groups, and it is precisely my intention to assign the exams within one assignment group only to the sections that get that group's weighting, so they won't show up for the other students in the other sections. As you point out, duplicating exams and assignments is a total pain, but I've slogged through that part already (worse than my example, because there are actually three different sections with different weights, and up to five assignment groups per section). My exams have to be separate, because I have undergrads and grads with different versions of the exam, and the grads have extra assignments that the undergrads don't have. But some things (e.g. lab assignments) are shared and weighted the same.  As for regret, the set-up for weighted assignments with assignments in some groups assigned only to specific sections wouldn't be regrettable at all if duplicating things were easier, but I'm not touching New-Next Quizzes with a 12 foot pole and a can of Raid! I'd much rather put this bit of work in up front than manage three different course sites all semester.    ... View more

Oh no. I may be in trouble. I just tried to do this in my shell for this fall by creating assignment groups at different weights with duplicate assignments in them. I was counting on an "empty" assignment group for any given section just not figuring in. Will that not work? I mean, it's a total pain in the rear, and I'd rather be able to assign weights from within the assignment itself, but is this whole shell going to explode on me? Example of what I just did and may regret terribly: Assignment Weight for Section A Weight for Section B Exams 50 90 Participation 10 10 Lab quizzes 40 0   Assignment group: Exams, Section A (50%) - Everything in this group assigned only to A Assignment group: Exams, Section B (90%) - Everything in this group assigned only to B Assignment group: Participation, all sections (10%) - Everything in this group assigned to "everyone" Assignment group: Lab Quizzes, Section A (40%) - Everything in this group assigned only to A Assignment group: Lab Quizzes, Section B (0%)   ... View more

@James_Kocher_UF What do you think ... would UF sport some house-keeping software? ... View more

This does look pretty useful (though I can see one major caveat in your screenshot: I use a LOT of images in questions that are in question banks, and it looks like those would be missed). I'll have to check into this further; after years of managing over-burdened servers, our admin folks may be very willing to entertain a tool that could help us clean house!  ... View more