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Thanks for this information. My college uses Dropout Detective, but it's not working in one of my courses. The error message says, "We're sorry! This course is not supported by Dropout Detective™.  The course is being filtered out due to the course filter." Do you know what "the course filter" is? Is that something I (as instructor) set and can fix myself, or is it something the IT department at my college sets? If anyone knows and can point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it! ... View more

Thank you! ... View more

Thank you, Kalli, but I don't know how to suggest a feature idea or "to link it here so others can find it and vote it up ...." Also, coach @Chris_Hofer told me that new feature ideas aren't being accepted until February: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Question-Forum/Points-or-benchmark-grading-schemes/m-p/548384/highlight/true#M182088. If anyone reading this knows how to do that and wants to suggest it for me, please do! ... View more

Thank you so much for your response, but I'm not sure I'm understanding. It sounds really overwhelming. Essentially, what I want is to have quizzes in all five of my courses that link to a single set of banks, so if I need to update, add, or delete a question, I can do it just once, not five times.  I don't know what a QTI is. Is that when I "Export Course Content" in "Settings"? (I usually just "Import Course Content" in my new courses by copying an existing course, not exporting and importing.) I've never exported a course or banks to save outside of Canvas, but if I do and then I need to update, add, or delete a question, I'd need to reexport before the next semester, right? By " then use them as question banks or convert them into 48 item banks by importing," it sounds as if you are explaining how to export my current question banks and then create a set of question banks in each of my five courses  based on those exports. If I do that, though, won't each of the five courses have its own banks, so if I need to update, add, or delete a question, I will have to do it five times, not just once? I'm so confused! ... View more

Is there a way to send an announcement to only certain students? For example, every semester, I want to send a message to only the students who did not submit a particular assignment. I know I can do this through the gradebook, but I can't save the text of the message there. I have to retype the message every semester. I also know that I can search old messages in the Inbox, but the only way to search there is by person, not by text content. I'd have to remember who I sent a message to last semester in order to find and copy the text. I suppose I could just keep a Word document with the text of all my recurring messages, but that seems silly. I also know that I can get a message to select students through assignment comments, and I'm glad that Canvas now allows us the option of saving comments. However, I don't think students notice assignment comments as much as they do announcements, Inbox messages, or emails. (I know I don't.)  What I've ended up doing is sending the announcement to everyone but including the wording, "If you did not submit...." I hate that I'm wasting good students' time and annoying them with stuff that's irrelevant to them. In fact, I think when students get messages that don't apply to them, it makes them more likely to see ALL messages as irrelevant. I just noticed that there is a "Share" option on announcements where I can share them with select people, but after researching the Canvas Guides, it looks as if I can only share with other instructors, not students. Am I understanding this correctly?  Does anyone have a suggestion? ... View more

Hi! I'm just wondering if, other than making it so the student cannot submit the item, this is any different than just leaving the item blank/ungraded. I'm still trying to figure out a way to grade based on points rather than percentages (https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Question-Forum/Points-or-benchmark-grading-schemes/m-p/548380#M182084). I was wondering if I could just tell students assignments are optional and either mark as excused or don't enter zeros for things left undone. However, now that I think about it, this means that students who do 10 of 10 assignments and earn 99% on each would have lower scores than students who do one assignment and earn 100% on it. I just really wish Canvas could do points. I think it would incentivize students. ... View more

I think I have scenario #1, but I don't understand what you mean by "create a new quiz in the source course." Isn't that what my existing quizzes are? I have sixteen quizzes and 48 banks, so I don't want to have to create 16-48 new quizzes, export, and import them all. Plus, would I have to do this for each of my five courses individually? I'm hoping I can just copy the course with the banks. Is that impossible? ... View more

How/where can I find this proposal to vote on it? Can you provide a link? ... View more

The "Role Pills" are misleading. After they showed up on a new announcement in my course, I did a lot of hit-or-miss searching here in the Canvas Community to find out what they are. I was hoping for a way to change them. My new announcements have "pills" saying "Author" and "Teacher," but I am not an author and am not sending my resume, just an announcement. That label erroneously gives the impression that I am a published author, not the "author" of that announcement. Something like "Sender," "Originator," or "Thread Starter" might be more accurate, or a simple icon might work.  ... View more

I have a related question about question banks, and I'm hoping you have the answer. I have quizzes that are tied to question banks in a course. When I copy the whole course, it seems that it puts a COPY of the question bank into the new courses. My thinking is that if I find an error in a question bank, I'll then have to fix it in multiple question banks. I'd like that same quiz in all my courses tied to a SINGLE question bank. When I build a quiz, I see that I can link it to question banks in various courses -- even some from years ago -- so I can BUILD a quiz to draw from question banks in other courses. Is it possible for me to COPY a quiz to do this? Also, if I have a quiz linked to a question bank in a different course, is Canvas putting all those questions into my "unfiled" bank? (I noticed that "unfiled" in the new course has 400+ items in it!) If so, then is the new (copied or newly built) quiz actually drawing from the other course's bank, or is it drawing from the "unfiled" bank in its own course? Ultimately, my problem is this: I am ready to copy my course for the spring semester. Should I copy the entire course (duplicating the question banks), or should I copy everything EXCEPT the question banks and then manually rebuild the copied quizzes to draw from the old course's question banks (which is a LOT of work)? ... View more

When you write, " The syllabus link has border-bottom, padding-bottom, and margin-bottom applied to it. The Files just has a border-bottom applied," how did you "apply" those? My Redirect tool doesn't allow any coding, just "Name" and "URL Redirect." Thanks! ... View more

Hi, I have been searching everywhere on this site for an explanation of what the "Excused" designation does to a grade. Your post seemed the likeliest place to find an explanation, but when I clicked the link in your post, it said I don't have access to that page. My question is just when I designate a grade as "excused," does Canvas count it in the overall grade as 100% or does Canvas eliminate that assignment from the average? For example, if the course had ten assignments of ten points each (total 100 possible points in the course of equal weight), a student has scored a 7 on nine of the assignments and I mark the tenth assignment as excused, is the student's final grade going to be 70% (63 out of 90) or 73% (63 out of 90 plus 10 out of 10, i.e., 73 out of 100)? If you know the answer to this or can point me in the right direction as to where to find the answer, I'd greatly appreciate it! ... View more

I'm confused. I got a Global Announcement that read , " If you, as a user, would like to provide feedback to Canvas about the proposed changes, take a quick (<5 min) survey at  https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/The-Product-Blog/Feedback-Opportunity-RCE-UX-Polish/ba-p/489159 ." The RCE UX Testing wasn't a survey and  didn't seem to offer anything new. It only asked me to perform three super-simple tasks, and the window wouldn't even let me make any mistakes. For example, when it asked me to add a link, I couldn't type in the window or scroll. The only thing that worked on the page was the link button. What kind of test was that?  ... View more

This would be a great feature to add. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think web browsers have a way to "run" spell-check; they just automatically underline potential misspellings, right? Having the spell-checker in the discussion-board page rather than in the browser would be more like the way they do it for a Word document (essay). They could get into the habit of doing it that way.  ... View more

I'm not sure, but this sounds similar to a problem I had last week. I didn't have this problem with assignments but with adding files like PDFs and Pptx. See https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor/Links-to-files-on-pages-are-not-previewing/m-p/429782#M929. If you view the html coding, I suspect you'll see "/preview" at the end of that assignment's link. (You can hit "Ctrl F" to find those letters on the page.)  Unfortunately, I had to manually fix each individual file that I'd linked. I hope this helps you. ... View more

Here's another "workaround" Canvas has provided in lieu of actually fixing the problem:   From: Instructure Support <support@instructure.com> Sent: Friday, January 1, 2021 11:01 PM To: servicecloudlog@instructure.com Subject: Canvas Support: File Previews - Case #07096236 [] [ ref:_00DA0Ibsk._5002Gu2HQZ:ref ]   Hello Jana, Thank you for reaching back out to Canvas Support. I'm sorry that you have had trouble with putting files in Canvas and having them display properly. I have spent some time looking through your course, and I haven't managed to find another page that is showing this behavior. [NOTE FROM JANA TO CANVAS COMMUNITY: THIS IS BECAUSE I HAVE BEEN MANUALLY DELETING "/PREVIEW" FROM HTML EACH TIME I LINK A FILE!) However, I did find a ticket in our system for a behavior that may match what you are reporting. I have recorded a video to demonstrate it here: https://share.getcloudapp.com/P8umDXXG. After watching the video, if you feel that it matches what you are seeing,  please let us know. Depending on the status of the behavior, we may be able to associate that ticket to your case so you can be sent any updates we send out on it. Unfortunately, we may not have a timeframe. However, if the behavior you are experiencing is different at all, please respond with a video showing the full behavior from start to finish. This would include showing the uploading of the file, showing adding the file to the page, showing what happens when trying to preview, and showing what happens when you try the workaround that Drew advised the other day. I hope this is helpful. Feel free to reach back out to us if you have any other questions or concerns. Warm regards,  Tate D. L1 Canvas Support Support@instructure.com I hope this is helpfulr ... View more