Tabs on Course Tiles (New UI) - no Indicators

[crafte]

On the new dashboard course tiles display tabs representing the main course features (assignments, discussions, quizzes, and announcements). When new content (student post, assignment submission, new announcement etc.) has been added, a blue indicator is supposed to alert the instructor. We have been receiving reports from instructors that this feature is not working. Switching to the recent activity dashboard will list the notification for the new content. Is there a setting that might prevent the course tiles from displaying the activity indicators?

[kona]

 @crafte ​, we haven't switched to the new UI, but in some of my testing it appears that the indicator is not always immediate and is sometimes delayed. Do you know if it ever shows up for the student/Instructor? In addition, I'm sharing this with the User Group: New UI​ to see if anyone there has experienced this issue or knows anything about it.

[crafte]

Hi  @kona 

Thank you for checking into this matter. According to the instructors and my own testing, the indicator icon did not appear. If the notification indicators are delayed, they still will not be very useful for instructors.

[kona]

It could be that I was testing in Beta/Test, so definitely don't quote me on the delayed thing! It might not be a bad idea to go ahead and report this to Canvas Support to see what they have to say.

[crafte]

I was planning to but I first wanted to see if someone had the same experience and they found a solution. I will post back once I get a response from Canvas Support.

[kona]

Thanks! We are switching over next week so this would be good information to know!

[crafte · Accepted solution]

Hi  @kona 

Below is the response from Instructure:

I apologize if this wasn't very clear and I can understand the confusion. When I said brand new discussion item, I meant discussion items created by clicking on "+Discussion" button. Any new post/reply to the “Some new topic” discussion item will not trigger the "blue dot" to appear on the Teacher's Dashboard. (The “Some new topic” discussion item has a read state because the Teacher had already viewed the discussion - right after creating it). Currently, Canvas only notifies users via User Dashboard (blue dot) if they'd never seen a discussion before; it will not show a Dashboard notification if a user replies or creates a post under the read discussion item.

We have informed our Engineering team about how the current design can confuse users and I have attached this case to a tracker regarding a "feature request" to possibly change this behavior and include new reply and post to trigger the “blue dot". You will receive an update if this feature has been updated.

It's also good to note: "To receive notifications for Discussions, users must actively post in the discussions at least once every two weeks. If a user stops participating in a discussion after two weeks, Canvas will no longer display discussion notifications." (see guide).

Again, users should still be able to see recent discussion activity by switching their Dashboard view from course list to Recent Activity view (without the "blue dot" but the recent activity still shows). Another option is to view their To Do List to see the recent student replies to a graded discussion. Teachers can also enable their Discussions and All Submission notification preference to receive updates on new discussion replies/post.

[kona]

Hmm... Interesting. Not what I was expecting, but good information to be aware of!

[kona]

Someone just created this feature idea that directly relates to this issue -