About venitk

venitk · ‎09-27-2022

@elawlor , a couple things you said don't match with my experience, so I just wanted to share in case it helps. In my instance of Canvas, announcements are organized chronologically, not alphabetically. If yours are alpha, I wonder if you have some unusual setting turned on? Also in my classes, when we design discussions, we are using the OLD/CURRENT discussion tool (ie, not the new Discussion Tool) and when we create discussions, we do turn on the thread feature, which allows students to read the posts as threads. You could easily create discussions for Q&As, etc. and embed those in the modules. You might already know this and have decided not to use this for whatever reason, but it didn't seem like you knew that based on your post, so I wanted to share. Having said that, I really like the idea of a social comment box at the bottom of Pages.

venitk · ‎07-21-2022

@Jeff_F I believe that CQ question groups convert to individual item banks ("Question groups with manually created questions will migrate as item banks in New Quizzes"). Can that be confirmed, and if that's the case, what is the management plan? I've asked this before, but if a CQ has 25 questions, each with their own question group, and there are, say, 5 exams, that means in NQ it will generate 125 item banks associated with that course alone (not counting any unit quizzes). If this is the case, that question groups transform into individual item banks, as an admin, I could potentially have access to thousands or millions of item banks over an entire subaccount. This does not seem manageable. Won't that slow things down considerable if I try to access all the item banks I have access to? Won't it, like, break something? Can Canvas confirm or correct my understanding?

venitk · ‎04-26-2022

It would be great if padding was one of the image options features (so we didn't have to find it in HTML). Is that on the horizon?

venitk · ‎04-11-2022

Having the item banks default to "this course" and letting anyone with the right permissions see those banks is a huge improvement, thank you! However, I'd like you to consider the next step. Let's say I work with a completely typical undergraduate course. The course has 14 end-of-unit quizzes, each with 10 questions. Each question pulls randomly from a group of 3 questions (so, each question can be one of three options). Additionally, there's three 25-question exams, and each of those questions pull from different groups. In other words, in that one course there are (one moment, I'm doing some math...) 215 question groups. That works in Classic because those groups live within each quiz. If I need to edit a question, I just go to the quiz, find the right group, and I can edit. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that in NQ, those question groups would become item banks that I could only edit by going through the item bank menu OUTSIDE of the quizzes. I'm not sure how I would easily do that with 215 item banks. I have another concern about how edits to item banks might retroactively adjust item banks in completed courses. It's important to have an accurate snapshot of student performance in a past course. If adjusting an item bank changes the questions seen in past courses, that's problematic. If that's not the case--if when clicking on moderate quiz or whatever for a student filing a grievance, we still see the questions as the student saw it--then I think that's ok. I am relieved to hear that Canvas is looking for a way to keep surveys. Graded surveys (those in which students receive points just for doing a survey; there are not "right" answers) are integral in some of our courses in promoting deeper student thought.

venitk · ‎04-06-2022

I don't have an answer for you, but would you post here what support responds with? This is what I'm afraid is going to happen to our Admin once we move to New Quizzes (we haven't yet), but I wasn't thinking it would happen to faculty. Does it help when they change the dropdown from All Banks to something else?

venitk · ‎02-02-2022

I agree. We encouraged instructors to be active in discussions as appropriate, but it's a pain when they have to keep unclicking the subscribe button. But they still want to be subscribed to the Ask the Class discussion. So it would be great to be able to disable the auto-subscribe after responding feature.

venitk · ‎01-04-2022

Although, maybe they're coming. This page lists "checkpoints" under the 3rd phase, which is in discovery: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Discussions-Announcements/Discussions-Redesign-Early-Access/ba-p/463255

venitk · ‎01-04-2022

+1 for someone hoping for each student to have multiple due dates: one for the original post and one for the followup. That's what I thought "multiple due dates" meant, so I'm really sad to learn that's NOT what was meant.

venitk · ‎12-14-2021

I agree with others that it might be an interesting conversation to ask NQ users what they would need to transition to CQ. For us, the only thing that "would be nice" is having the fuller diversity of question types that NQ offers. Generally, however, CQ meets all of our needs.

venitk · ‎12-13-2021

@sharris I'm sorry you're in this position of transitioning before the tool is ready. That sounds frustrating and overwhelming. We're fully online, too, but we're MUCH smaller. Since we'll still be able to copy CQ from a current course to a new course until past this summer (we just won't create quizzes from scratch), we're punting and hoping our future selves and future NQ have closer harmony than our current selves and current NQ. We're also coincidentally and luckily revising the courses that have the most quizzes now so we don't need to deal with creating quizzes from scratch for a while and will just reuse CQ in next year's courses. But again, we're much much smaller. Anyway, I wish you good luck. You mentioned the timeline changed again. Where are you seeing that? I'm looking at https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/The-Product-Blog/Classic-Quiz-Sunset-Timeline-Subscribe/ba-p/470973 and it seems like the only change so far is that they're extending the ability to edit a quiz through Phase 3 (currently until June 2023). Is there someplace that's been updated more recently?

venitk · ‎11-29-2021

Thanks for asking. I echo all the thoughts above. Maybe I'm missing something, but there are no question groups. In Classic, if I want students to answer 20 questions, and each of those 20 questions have 3 options to preserve academic integrity), I would keep all those questions in the quiz and create 20 groups. However in NQ, I would need to make 20 item banks. That's so many banks. If the course has 3 exams, each with 20 questions, that's 60 item banks for a single course, There isn't an intuitive way to create an item bank in the course. I just tried to do it without referencing the guides and couldn't (so we'd also need to train people to do this). Additionally, the way banks are stored and accessed across an account is unsustainable. Admins/IDs who have access to every bank will be completely inundated with banks. Unless stimulus questions are modified to act as question groups, this will be absolute chaos and immense cognitive overload. We need a way to quickly see what questions don't exactly migrate 100% perfectly; otherwise we have to manually check each question in each quiz to make sure everything--formatting, question choices, literally everything--migrated perfectly. 99% isn't good enough. So we need some sort of flag or warning--that needs to be 100% (again, 99% isn't good enough) reliable--telling us when a specific question needs attention (and it needs to identify specifically which question). If we don't have this, those of us who are admins who support whole programs (rather than individual faculty who just have to worry about their own courses) will need at least 12 months of really intense work to complete the migration. Even with this, 12 months would be ideal because everything in higher ed moves slowly. We really need a solution to "keep" practice quizzes and graded surveys (ungraded surveys would be nice, too). We use these two tools to control student access through the courses, following Canvas advice. When Canvas personnel trained us on, for example, Mastery Paths or locking down progress through a module, etc., practice quizzes and graded surveys were touted as a way to do it. All of our courses start with students taking a practice quiz Code of Conduct. I also have classes where students have to submit "worksheets" that were completed as graded surveys in order to unlock an assignment later in the module. It's not the same just saying these items don't count towards the student's final grade or making them worth 0 points because they still show up in the gradebook.

venitk · ‎11-16-2021

@Katrina-Hess Should students be able to reply to announcements in the redesign? This is an important feature for us.

venitk · ‎11-04-2021

"One of the new features we are excited to include is the ability to proactively add messages to particular elements and pages within Canvas. Those proactive messages may contain links to guides, release notes, and images, or other useful information that can help users long before they need to submit a Support ticket." Are these messages that we (ie institutional Canvas admins) program or that Canvas programs?

venitk · ‎10-21-2021

@cdoherty , I don't know that Shaun is on the team for New Quizzes. If you'd like to get your concerns directly in the hands of the NQ PM, I'd suggest posting here, in the new quizzes group: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/New-Quizzes-Users/gh-p/quizzes I've found the New Quizzes PM, Su Sorenson, to be responsive to feedback about the tool. I know she can't make all the changes people have been suggesting, of course, but she's been receptive to learning about user experiences. I'm also concerned about the timeline. Our courses are administered by a team of instructional designers, so we're going to have to make all the changes ourselves, and right now each of our 100+ courses uses a quiz type that won't be available in NQ. I brought my concerns to Su, who listened to my feedback. She made no promises (as she couldn't), but thanked me for my thoughts. Where did you see instructure saying the timeline might be pushed back? I've been advocating for major changes to be completed at least 6 months before they're enforced (a year would be better) for the reasons you stated.

venitk · ‎10-19-2021

I'm sensing some reluctance to talk dates, which is understandable since you're still working on big items. 🙂 So I'm just going to say: It's best when we have at least 6 months from the time when the big items in the redesign are done to enforcement. Reason being: we want to avoid changing anything in the middle of a term if that change would significantly impact extraneous cognitive load (student and faculty). Big changes impact extraneous cognitive load, little changes are usually OK. So times of the year like end of December, May-ish, August-ish, are good times for us to turn features on. If Canvas allows everyone 6 months to make the change, that allows schools more flexibility if their best times of year aren't December, May, or August.

venitk · ‎10-19-2021

@Katrina-Hess I think by "limited nesting" you're referring to replies only going one deep, correct? Here's a use case for why that may not work for people structurally, beyond that it's just generally easier to keep track of threads when you have more nesting. We used to use D2L. In D2L, you could have open small group discussions: you assign students to a group, and each group can talk amongst themselves, but ALSO see what the other groups are up to. Or, students could self select a discussion question they wanted to discuss. That's not possible in Canvas, so when we migrated, a Canvas trainer suggested we keep it as a whole class discussion. If there were different prompts, put all the prompts together in the discussion topic. If the instructor wanted to keep all the posts on a topic together, they should start the threads and have students reply to those threads. So, let's say there were three prompts and students pick one prompt to respond to. If the instructor wants to keep those replies on each particular prompt together, the instructor posts three threads--one prompt each--and students pick the thread they want to respond to. Without deeper nesting, this sort of structure doesn't work--it'll be a flat discussion and students who reply to other students could have their replies dozens of replies away from the original student's post. So basically, it would only allow for students to make one post, rather than have a discussion. Erin and I had a conversation related to this about why the release Q&As were moved to separate pages--because the community platform doesn't allow for threaded conversations, it makes the conversations harder to follow. If the instructor posts the parent threads, it would make all subsequent replies unthreaded. IF I understand the functionality of limited nesting correctly! Thank you for asking for our feedback. I'm also involved in the New Quizzes group, and I've been very impressed with how you and @SuSorensen have been managing these projects openly, empathetically, and honestly. Change is really scary for those of us on the receiving end of the changes when they have such a huge role in our day-to-day. I'm sure there will be things about both finished products that I may not like or may take some getting used to, but because I've been able to give feedback, I feel more of a partner in the process and less like change is being foisted upon me. It eases the uncomfortable process of change, regardless of the outcome. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know your efforts to involve power users have been seen, recognized, and appreciated.

venitk · ‎10-19-2021

@Katrina-Hess Do you expect this discussions redesign to be pushed on for all institutions by the end of second quarter 2022? (ie, before Summer 2022?) We're trying to decide when to turn it on for our courses. We want to wait until most of the big changes have settled, but don't want it to be forced on in the middle of a term if we can avoid it. thanks! Katie

venitk · ‎10-18-2021

@erinhmcmillan is this consolidation still happening? I just noticed there is a deploy notes release for 10/27. EDIT: Never mind, I needed to read this post more carefully. Sorry!

venitk · ‎09-27-2021

Also, I agree with Audra that more specificity in the timeline would be helpful for planning. Thanks!

venitk · ‎09-27-2021

What happens if a course has a classic quiz type (such as it's a survey) or question type (eg, a type of question not offered in New Quizzes)? Will be get some sort of warning? Thanks, @SuSorensen, this is very helpful.

Post Details	Date Published	Views	Likes
Timeline update for when Discussions Redesign is forced on? @Katrina-Hess Do you expect this discussions redesign to be pushed on for all institutions by the end of second quarter 2022? (ie, before Summer 2022?) We're trying to decide when to turn it o...	10-19-2021	570	0
Adding bottom border to a table without CSS I'm working on a finance/accounting course, lots of tables. I want to have borders on the bottoms of the rows only (so, only have horizontal lines). But I can't change the overall subaccount CSS beca...	01-21-2021	11923	0
Receiving error message when trying to export course content We've had a couple reports of students unable to download course content (different students, different courses). The button IS checked in settings. I tried it myself, in Chrome, an...	05-06-2020	479	0
Will Vimeo Notifications Video be Updated? We have a Vimeo tutorial video embedded in our online teaching certification course for instructors. Will this video be updated to show the change to SMS notifications, or should we delete it from ou...	05-06-2020	293	0
View Click Pathways through Analytics? We're trying to figure out how students access the materials in our courses. In other words, are they accessing their discussions through the Calendar, To-Do list, Discussions tab, or the Home tab (w...	01-23-2020	347	0
Shift dates best practice for open/start and end/close dates When you ask Canvas to automatically shift the dates, what are the best practices for which dates you choose? I'll explain: Our courses open to students a week before the course starts an...	01-03-2020	490	0
[Gradebook] Gradebook and Speedgrader dropdown: Visible, Invisible, and More Options In New Gradebook, instructors intuit incorrectly that Hide and Post replace Mute/Unmute. They believe these actions affect future grades. They do not know to look for the Grade Posting Policy. &nb...	12-10-2019	2476	25
Grade Posting Policy Use and Scenarios My team created a post on our blog on the New Gradebook Grade Posting Policy for our instructors. You are welcome to share it with your instructors. As the policy is updated, I will update this same ...	11-01-2019	1085	2
Clarifying Grade Posting Policy--Does Hide only affect grades already posted? I'm really hoping to get a Canvas super expert to weigh in here (erinhallmark‌, maybe? @CanvasDocTeam ‌?) I'm writing a blog post for our instructors on the Grade Posting Policy...	10-30-2019	1169	1
Graded Storyline in Canvas I investigated this in the past but thought it was worth bringing up again to see if the software has improved. We haven't been using Graded Storylines in Canvas because it seemed SCORM was ...	10-28-2019	976	0
How to set up a course where students can choose some assignments I'm working on setting up a course with 3 required assignments and a suite of optional ones (assignments and discussions) that they can choose from. How do I set this up? I thought at first ...	09-12-2019	1078	2
[Announcements] Fix Unexpected Behavior: Un-Delay Announcement announcements don't appear in correct order When we delay announcements (say, if we have some left over from the previous offering of the course that we want to reuse but aren't sure when the course starts when it will run so we aren't ready t...	06-26-2019	1365	23
Put Everything with a Due Date on the Calendar and Syllabus Even if you set practice quizzes, for example, with a due date, that date doesn't appear on the calendar. The only place for students to see that dates is if they go through Modules (our institution ...	03-14-2019	3881	25
Remove prerequisites when the module it's based on is removed Currently, when the module a prerequisite is based on is removed, the prerequisite LABEL persists on the modules with that prerequisite on them. I'm suggesting removing that label from the modules. ...	01-03-2019	2383	1
How to not show a picture or name in announcements/discussions I came across this thread about how to manually add the pic/initials of the instructor to discussions. I have the opposite question: We'd like to manually remove IDs pictures/initials from annou...	11-08-2018	1352	3
Multiple answers in numerical quizzes In what situation would I want multiple answers in a numerical answer quiz? Would I need to do that for something like $2000 vs $2,000 or 2000 or 2,000? Or does the numerical choice automatically fil...	10-03-2018	2295	2
Attach a course file to a small group discussion An instructor I'm working with would like to attach a file to a small group discussion. He copy and pastes the same reply to each discussion, and that reply should include a link to a file. In D...	10-03-2018	1218	1
Summary of notification Several instructors I'm working with have expressed frustrations at the email notifications. They are signed up to be notified when a student posts a comment on their submissions (so, if they have a ...	10-03-2018	842	2
Transfer grade from rubric I found couple of old threads about this issue, but they seem to indicate that the problem has been fixed, but it doesn't seem like it has. I created a rubric through outcomes. This rubric wou...	09-16-2018	1548	1
to do vs calendar event Hi IDs, I'm trying to figure out when to use calendar events vs. when to do "to-dos" on the calendar. Specifically I'm wondering about the second date for discussions (you know, there's the due date...	09-13-2018	4568	12

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