Community

  replying to the most recent post on this topic, April 20, 2022. Good to know. I may go back and vote for it, but I’ve discovered over the years that votes don’t really count at Canvas, in spite of their claims. ... View more

@bishopta I don't know too many people using the new quizzes. I'm curious how you handle the lack of partial credit--unless something has been fixed since the last time I tried it. For example in a matching problem of 10 points if a student gets 9 right, the student still gets a zero. This is a different topic of course, but since the subject came up, I thought I'd ask. ... View more

@canvas 20202 "Our engineers can't create all the suggestions made on the community at the same time so they prioritize the suggestions with the most votes." Sounds reasonable except that so, so, so many of the fixes we've been asking for are 1) total no brainers that should have been implemented to begin with, and 2) people have been upvoting them and asking for them for years. Like 5 years in many cases. Sometimes I think there is only 1 engineer.  ... View more

@ Steuard If you are using new quizzes please beware—last I checked, the new quizzes do not give partial credit. So for example if you have a matching problem with 10 matches, and your student gets 9 of them right, he still gets a zero. That has been a big issue among lots of users; if it has been fixed I don’t know about it yet. Many of us have refused to use new quizzes until it gets fixed, but it has been years and last I heard, no fix yet. ... View more

Our institution bought ipads for all students and faculty 3 years ago. These include Apple Pencils. What a wonderful way to go paperless. So now I can accept assignments and mark on them. But for tests, there is no way to draw pictures, or write equations with the pencil. That's too bad. At least, there was the file upload option...I haven't used that yet, because I just did that on paper until this semester. (I used quizes for all my multiple choice/matching/ T/F questions, and a hard copy for things requiring drawing.) Due to covid, however, we can't be touching paper others have touched. So today I started writing my test and discovered that the file upload option doesn't work with speedgrader. Sure, you can see a link on speedgrader to manually download, but can't actually use it like it is meant to be used, marking up student papers. So I plan to ask students to do the test and separately upload another doc with the drawing questions. What a pain, what a bummer, what a disappointment which is piled on top of many Canvas disappointments. My favorite Canvas feature, when we adopted it a couple of years ago, was that we could suggest new features. But then I learned that let alone new features, even no brainer things that have been begged for, pleaded for, for many years and years have not yet been implemented. Things like this. Or like the inability to simply paste pictures into test questions (this has been on their list for at least 5 years). Or the clunky attendance tool--to get a report, you have to have it email you a link, then you download a file, which lists ALL the students for the first day of class. Then it lists ALL the students again for the second day of class...and for the third day...etc etc. instead of just creating a table with the students listed down the left column, and the class dates across the top. See what I mean? A no brainer! The gradebook lists students down the left column, with assignments across the top, so why can't the attendance be the same way? What were these people thinking? Has anyone on the Canvas staff ever taught a class? Then there is the new quizzes, which I was so excited to use...until I learned that if a kid gets 9 out of 10 matching questions right, they get a zero. Yep, no partial credit. That is so jaw-droppingly stupid I don't even have words for it. And that issue has been around for years. I've seen so many other teachers complain about that too, that they will not use quizzes next until this is fixed. I wonder if anyone is actually using it. Why build a new tool that no one will actually use, or why not fix it? How hard can it be to have it do partial credit? Anyway, I've given up expecting any of these things to change, since no-brainer issues haven't been fixed in years. But occasionally I can't help venting.  ... View more

I've been using Canvas 3 or 4 years and have not been able to copy/paste and finally I got fed up and decided to see what others think. I've already been complaining about new quizzes not giving partial credit matching, and about the clunky attendance tool...these things are not special features we're asking for, but "no brainers." You'd think maybe the software developers who decided that if a kid gets 9 out of 10 matching questions right should get a zero, was drunk or high at work. Or that made it impossible to paste pictures. When we first got Canvas, the thing that excited me most was that they cared about what their users thought, and allowed users to suggest features and vote on them. But now I know that those votes and suggestions go nowhere. So disappointed.  ... View more

I’ll get people submitting new assignments over top of old ones, in the wrong place. So then it looks like the old assignment, which I’ve already graded, needs to be graded again. If I give it the same grade, however, Canvas thinks it is late and then takes off late points. All because a student submitted a new assignment to the wrong assignment that he’s already submitted to. I agree, I don’t know what new features Canvas is adding, but they need to fix this, the stupid attendance feature, and the extra stupid quizzes next which doesn’t give partial credit to matching questions. As far as “often times you don’t listen” as mentioned by the previous poster, I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a time when Canvas has listened. ... View more

Yes! Well stated. Just as I’ve been saying for so long, this is not a special feature, it is a “no brainer.” And it is astounding that it hasn’t been fixed—unless you believe, as I’m coming to believe, that Canvas/Estruction is in such deep financial woes or some other kind of ethical/legal trouble, that they can’t get their act together and fix these issues that haven’t been fixed for years. Or else that its leadership is woefully incompetent. Or all of the above. I hardly ever use such language, but at this point I don’t know what else to think. ... View more

When our institutionalization adopted Canvas a couple of years ago, my favorite thing was that people could suggest and vote on new features. But sadly, I found out that before we get new features, we need to fix lots of old features, just to make them workable. And I found out that years go by before even the most basic things get fixed…makes you wonder what their software folks do all day. Or may they don’t have software folks. ... View more

One of my colleagues once showed me how to download attendance from Canvas and work magic with excel to make the report actually useable. However, I cannot remember how, and so I find it much easier just to keep attendance with my own excel sheet: Student names down the left side, and attendance dates across the top. That way, I can fill in each cell with present, absent, or I can write things like football game, sick, attended wedding, etc. The Canvas attendance feature should be like this: a simple spreadsheet with names down the left side and dates across the top. It makes logical sense, but as we’ve all learned on many occasions with many Canvas features, Canvas isn’t all that logical, and one wonders about the mental state of those who created many of its features. This sounds mean of me to say, but I’m pretty fed up with this and several other issues (like Quizzes Next which doesn’t offer partial credit for matching problems, for example) that haven’t been fixed in years even though they are total no-brainers. ... View more

If classic quizzes are terminated, and the new quizzes do not yet give partial credit, I will raise a fuss with my institution, hopefully with the help of my colleagues, and try to convince my institution to abandon Canvas. I think a lot of us nationwide would be ready to do something similar. But there is no reason this should take until July 2021 to fix this. I’m not a software expert, but it seems like an expert could fix this partial credit issue in a few minutes. That this has not happened demonstrates the institutional incompetence of Canvas/Estructure. ... View more

Don't hold your breath, Natalie. Many, many of us have been holding ours until we're blue in the face. ... View more

As I’ve said over and over and over on this forum, this is a NO BRAINER. It should have been made right to begin with. But I’m not sure Canvas is listening. This is not some special feature, this is just basic common sense. ... View more

It won’t change by then. Some really important no-brainer issues have languished for years without getting fixed. ... View more

Our institution has only been using Canvas for a year and a half. But according to this email, copied over from the old Canvas Community, this issue had been brought up 8.5 years ago!!! And hasn’t been fixed yet. I’m struggling to find the right word to describe this. Incompetence? ... View more