Canvas by Instructure Release Notes (iOS 3.10)

[erinhmcmillan]

In this update, the To Do list allows users to hide completed items, and students on iPad devices can hide or show grades on the Dashboard. All users also benefit from speed and caching improvements.

Download the Canvas by Instructure app in the iTunes Store. Version 3.10 requires iOS 8.0 or later.

  Updated Features

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Dashboard

To Do List

The To Do List has been redesigned to allow users to hide items in the to-do list. Swipe an assignment or event to hide the item.

Grades (iPad)

On the iPad, students can now choose whether or not to show their overall course grade. Tap the Show Grades link at the top of the app. To hide grades, tap the Hide Grades link.

[kmeeusen]

I would love for instructors to have the ability to not show assignments on the To Do lists. Having links to assignments outside the classrooms encourages bad behavior by students - they navigate directly to assignments, bypass the course materials needed to be successful in completing the assignments, and then wonder why they failed!

We lobbied long and hard to get "Assignments" out of the global navigation, and now its back. I know this feels like a student-centered approach to LMS design, but it is not. We need our students in their classrooms instead of trying to accomplish everything from the dashboard.

If you want to do something truly student- centered, have an assignments page that checks off when they submit an assignment, but has no active links to navigate the students to the assignments.

[dhulsey]

The average on the course card is fantastic. We need this for Desktop Canvas asap.

[cadatko]

Absolutely -- I second this! We try to hide as much as we can and/or lock down our content in the modules. This is also an issue for those of us teaching in the community colleges in CA, since we need to show that interaction is happening inside the course section and not just within the LMS.

[Beth_Young]

Another problem with the to-do list is that it isn't complete. Practice assignments, reading activities, work submitted offline, etc. never show up on the to-do list. Students reasonably believe that if they complete everything on the "to do" list they are "done." They are angry when they find out otherwise, and I don't blame them. If we must have a to-do list, please make it include everything that has a deadline.

[hvaughn]

I agree with Kelley about the difficulty that arises when links to assignments show up outside the course or even outside the "Modules" section within a course.  We, too, have found that too many student bypass important content needed to successfully understand and complete an assignment.  We use the Modules section to organize and present all content to students, and hide most other links in the course navigation pane.

[tom_gibbons]

I've been trying to understand the resistance to using module controls that require students to view things like a module intro page before they can access any of the module assignments, so that they understand the lay of the land.

This problem with students jumping to assignments and circumventing the course content seems more like an instructional design issue than a problem with the interface. I try to promote multiple ways of accessing the content (like the assignments page, the modules page, content pages, etc.) with controls set to prevent jumping ahead inappropriately. In other words, I leave many things open as I can, and control access to assignments when they need to be controlled.

The Grades page links back to individual assignments, as well. And that's something that I absolutely want to happen. The Assignments page is also the only place that students can clearly see the Assignment Group in which a given assignment will be calculated. So, for me, it's important to leave those two resources available to students and adjust my larger course design accordingly.

[kmeeusen]

Tom:

What if your modules include optional practice labs in the form of Canvas practice quizzes? If you require sequential movement through the modules, then these labs are no long practice, but required.

[kmeeusen]

I wanted to add, that when you just require a student to view the Intro page on a module, but don't require sequential viewing the students are still able to access the assignments in the module - or anywhere else they have been made available. This is what we want to stop, and yet want the opportunity to include practice activities.

[cadatko]

We do too. With the hyperlinks external to the course, however, even if the content is locked and they get a message that it's locked, students can still click on the assignment. This causes a lot of confusion on the part of the students and instructors leading to unnecessary emails back and forth. We should be able to have options in an assignment, such as 'populate calendar/syllabus with a hyperlink'.

[tom_gibbons]

I only make the required content required. The sequential order setting is only for required items. And even if it were for all items, I have no real problem with requiring a student to view an optional item--they don't have to complete it or interact with it, just clap their eyes on it.

Regardless, the sequential checkbox currently only applies to module completion requirements, not all module content. Once your students get to the optional content, they can just skip over it and go on to the next required module item. 

[tom_gibbons]

See my comment above, about the sequential order checkbox.

[Beth_Young]

I'm sure sequential modules are ideal for many courses. But sometimes students need to do something offline by a certain date, and that offline activity can't sensibly be made a module requirement (e.g., textbook readings, or something that has to be brought to class). And sometimes students need to complete a practice activity by a particular date, but not as a prerequisite for another assignment (e.g. I need my students to take a practice quiz to confirm that they know how to find/input IPA symbols, early enough that they can drop the class with no penalty if they find it too difficult). And sometimes there are assignments with multiple parts (e.g., discussions where you need to post by a certain date and then reply by a certain date) and I don't want students to first discover part I when they are trying to complete part 2--that is too late.

Besides, we shouldn't all have to tie assignments into clumps just so students know about them. Either let us turn off the "to do" list or include everything that has a deadline on the "to do" list. A partial "to-do" list causes more problems than it solves.

[tom_gibbons]

I'm not sure I follow. Everything that has a deadline (i.e., a due date) does appear on the To Do list. Calendar entries don't, but they do show on the "Coming Up" list in the browser version.

[Beth_Young]

Everything that has a deadline (i.e., a due date) does appear on the To Do list.

No, unfortunately, it does not. More detail here: " modifiedtitle="true" title="Put everything with a deadline into the to-do list

I haven't spent a lot of time comparing the iOS to-do list with the android & browser to-do lists, but I assume they are all compiled in the same way.

[tom_gibbons]

Hey! You're absolutely right!

I used to use the 0-point, no submission assignment to pop things into the To Do list, instead of the Coming Up list. I haven't done it in a year or two, so that's a surprise.

A strategy that might work, until they get this shaken out, is to create a weekly guide page for the course, and put all of the readings, non-graded stuff, etc on it. Then put the guide into a module, make it the only required item, require sequential completion, and then put the assignments that are due that week into the same module (no need to put anything else into the module, nor to make the assignments required). If I were going to engage this strategy, I would also hide the Modules page from the navigation, since you're just using it to force the students to read the overview. You could also rotate the weekly plan as the home page for the week.

I know this approach creates some problems--if you want someone to read the details of a high-stakes assignment several weeks before it's due, that could be an issue. But I suppose you could just not put it in a module, but link to it in the week that you introduce the assignment.

Whether you use module controls or not--and I only use them when the occasion warrants--and whether you use modules or not (again, I don't always), I find that providing a periodic plan page has functionally eliminated complaints about not knowing that something was due. 

[Beth_Young]

Yeah, I may wind up doing something like this if the To Do list stays the same. It'll take some thought to figure out how to incorporate all of the non-to-do-list tasks, and I'm not looking forward to the extra work, but chasing down students and warning them to not rely on the to-do list is also extra work.

Thanks for the suggestion.

[erinhmcmillan]

Hi Kelley,

Just as a followup to these notes, the app is based on Canvas APIs. So being able to change the To Do list functionality would have to be a feature request and a change to core Canvas to make that happen.

Hope that helps!

Thanks,

Erin