Assignment Folders

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It would be great to have folders to move assignments into. I have only taught for one week and my assignments tab is already overwhelming. I would like to be able to organize them easily.

17 Comments
Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Moderating

@carki79 

Thanks for sharing this idea. The Assignments Index page integrates directly with the Canvas Gradebook. Placement of the assignments on the Assignments Index page governs the Gradebook view. Instructors also use the page to place assignments into the appropriate assignment groups and apply weightings to those groups that govern how the course grade is calculating. 

How do you envision preservation of the functionality of the Assignments page with the addition of a folder structure? Also, if you're not using assignment group weighting to calculate the course grade, have you considered using Assignment Groups to organize the page? How do I use the Assignments Index Page? has the details.

carki79
Community Member

Yes, I already use groups to organize the grading that is in place. You could use the folders the same way and have the "groups" now be the folders???  

I definitely understand how this communicates with the grading feature. 

 

What if you still had the option of assigning them a grading group but could still put them in folders that had nothing to do with the groups? Maybe somehow put the "group" feature in the gradebook portion of the course and leave the assignments free to be moved and arranged however the teacher needed? I hope this makes sense. 

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

@carki79 

We'll move the idea forward so that members can weigh in on the need for additional assignment page organization. As the conversation takes place, we recommend that teachers use the Search for Assignment field at the top of the Assignments list to locate a particular assignment quickly.

carki79
Community Member

Awesome!

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Open
 
cholling
Community Champion

If the purpose for folders is to find things quickly for the instructor, then @Stef_retired 's comment makes the most sense. If the purpose though is for students, I suggest hiding the Assignment tool and using Modules to organize. It's a simple way of organizing all content in the course and letting students understand how and where particular assignments (or other "building blocks") fit into the overall course structure.

carki79
Community Member

I would love to be able to hide the assignment tab in the course navigation, but if I do that students are not able to access their assignments even though they are arranged in modules. It says access to this page is disabled and takes them back to the home page. 

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

 

@carki79 

Instructors can hide the Assignments tab from the course navigation and students will still have access to their assignments through Modules; in fact, many if not most instructional designers recommend this streamlined approach to course navigation. If your students are receiving an "access to this page is disabled" message when they are trying to access their assignments from modules, something other than the course navigation is causing the error, so please troubleshoot those examples with your students.

 

sshoup1
Community Member

After 3+ years of using Canvas, my list of assignments is lengthy!  I would like to be able to organize whole blocks of unpublished assignments.  Moving one (future, unpublished) assignment into a module, one at a time is too tedious.

SZoller
Community Member

Hello Canvas, I am in need for additional Assignment page organization. I would like to be able to create folders within the existing folder tabs. I am a "Specials" Teacher who shares one Canvas Sandbox with other teachers. The Assignment page is getting filled up fast and I need your immediate attention to this matter. For example, in Google Drive you can create a folder and then create folders within this folder. Please help get this Canvas feature implemented. Organization is key!

mlh225
Community Member
We created assignment groups to organize different types of assignments (fall homework questions, spring homework questions, fall labs, spring labs, etc.) because there are a lot of different assignments over the course of this year-long course. Our university doesn't use grading periods, which might help others with this type of organization.
 
The problem is that students do not see this organization. They only see "overdue, undated, past" groupings. Allowing instructors to create custom groupings could be really helpful. (Or at least make it clear that students don't see our groupings, so it doesn't take a month of wondering why they are haven't trouble finding things that we tried hard to organize!)
Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Moderating

@mlh225 

Thanks for sharing this idea. Have you read through the idea description and thread at Assignment Folders - Canvas Community ? That might be along the lines of what you're hoping to see, and some of our members have mentioned in that thread that they'd like the visibility of this organization to be available for students as well as instructors—and there are a few interim solutions sprinkled in that thread.

Please let us know! If that idea essentially shares the problem statement you've presented, we'll archive this one to keep that discussion unified.

TampaNative
Community Explorer

Is there a way to possibly create a folder for Assignments by grading periods at least for when we access the links? Assignment lists can get extremely loooong when having to search alphabetically for assignments and clicking Show More multiple times, 7 times I am doing it now to access some assignments, time-consuming. Or having the options of looking for assignments through Modules without assigning and linking them to the Module. I prefer linking them to the specific assignment, but being able to group assignments as a Module would work as well. Maybe a search bar? When I use Control +F to find things Canvas gets upset with me.

Thinking of a way to make the Assignment list shorter and our search time more effective.

mlh225
Community Member

I really like SZoller's idea of folders within folders! I also use a Canvas site with other instructors and keeping our assignments in separate folders, but then organized by time period, would be great.

mlh225
Community Member

Yes, I think this could be combined.

The interim solutions suggested so far aren't ideal for my specific situation, although they are similar to what I am doing. I have weekly modules with links to the assignments. The problem is that students want a single place to look for assignments (not going into each week). This might not be a common problem, because usually students need to do the assignments the week they are due, but I need to be flexible right now when I am teaching adults who may be directly impacted by the pandemic (healthcare workers). The fix I'm using for now is to create a separate module just to list the assignments. Within that module, I can use headers and indentation to organize them as much as I want. I have one for fall now and will create one for spring once we get those going.

Inquiring101
Community Novice

It would be very helpful if the assignments were in folders by tab review.

It is confusing navigating through a long list rather than a month or week by week folder.

I believe this would help the teachers, students and parents.

We receive  so many emails it’s hard to know where to begin or end.

I hope this is something considered for the future. 

ProductPanda
Instructure
Instructure
Status changed to: Archived
Comments from Instructure

As part of the new Ideas & Themes process, all ideas in Idea Conversations were reviewed by the Product Team. Any Idea that was associated with an identified theme was moved to the new Idea & Themes space. Any Idea that was not part of the move is being marked as Archived. This will preserve the history of the conversations while also letting Community members know that Instructure will not explore the request at this time.