Add Option to Hide Old Groups From Dropdown

[ginan]

  This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

  Idea will be open for vote May 5th, 2015 - August 5th, 2015  Learn more about voting...

Please give students the ability to hide past course groups from their "Courses & Groups" dropdown. After a while, this becomes cluttered with old groups from courses they are no longer taking.

  Comments from Instructure...

Greetings all!  We often remind the Community that even archived ideas can become a real feature, and this one is proof of that!

Please take a look at the Canvas Production Release Notes (2015-09-19)

Conclude Groups at Course Conclusion

When a course concludes in Canvas, groups in the course also conclude. Concluded groups do not appear in the Courses & Groups menu. Users can still access their previous and current groups in the Groups page.

[rpetrina]

Some options on how to accomplish this:

1. Give users the option to "star" or "favorite" certain groups, like they do with course sites.
   • The concern is that newly created groups might not appear in the dropdown list. Students have no way of knowing when they are added to a newly created group unless the instructor sends an active notification. This would have to be taken into consideration.
2. If a course is unstarred from the My Courses menu, make it so that the corresponding groups are hidden from the My Groups dropdown.

[SethBattis]

There's an even more urgent corollary to this: ​

And we could make students' lives easier if we ​.

[rpetrina]

I think those are interesting options, but my institution noted the student-centered nature of Canvas as one of the reasons for adopting the platform. Thus, I am hoping that Instructure would continue to provide this type of personally-chosen customization options for student users (and faculty users) rather than relying only on the ability for admins to "lock down" certain features.

[scottdennis]

Panda-Cat: A mythical creature that we dreamed up to catch your attention, make you laugh, and encourage you to keep reading the explanation of our archive process for Feature Ideas

Archive: An archived Feature Idea is not dead forever, but it has been taken out of stage progression.  When Community members submit feature ideas they are reviewed by the Community Team and then put to a vote by the community at large.  If the idea does not receive 100 votes within 3 months it will be archived.  Ideas that reach the 100 vote threshold within the first three months remain open for voting. Find more information about this process at How does the voting process work for feature ideas?

Can archived ideas still become a feature?  Yes.  Some feature ideas that do not receive 100 votes are resubmitted by Community members and find more supporters as people's needs change, rising more quickly to the top.  Oftentimes archived feature ideas are evaluated in groups when we are preparing to refactor a particular tool or feature of Canvas and may still influence product direction.

[hewsimons]

Why can't the groups be treated like the courses are. A student is able to hide old classes so that only current classes show in the dashboard. So why can't canvas treat the groups the same way. Either the groups could be attached to the course they are tied to so if the course is hidden the group is as well. If the groups need to remain independent for some reason, they could still be treated the same as courses and be hidden in the drawer when not desired on the active dashboard.

[thmjesso]

Adding the option to view current groups would improve the efficiency of Canvas along with the usability of the student in finding the groups they belong to in the current semester rather than having to remember if that group was this semester or last semester. Also if I, as a student, select the wrong group I have to re-select the group. I believe that adding the feature to hid or show groups based on user selection would also improve efficiency of Canvas from the server standpoint, all the groups that the user doesn't want to see would not have to be listed and take up valuable server resources.

[jewells]

I agree with this proposal. I prefer am uncluttered a view as possible.

[Renee_Carney]

Greetings all!  We often remind the Community that even archived ideas can become a real feature, and this one is proof of that!

Please take a look at the Canvas Beta Release Notes

Conclude Groups at Course Conclusion

When a course concludes in Canvas, groups in the course also conclude. Concluded groups do not appear in the Courses & Groups menu. Users can still access their previous and current groups in the Groups page.

You can test this feature in your own beta instance.  Find  out more at How do I access the Canvas beta environment?​

[Renee_Carney]

This Feature is Complete!  Please take a look at the Canvas Production Release Notes (2015-09-19)

Conclude Groups at Course Conclusion

When a course concludes in Canvas, groups in the course also conclude. Concluded groups do not appear in the Courses & Groups menu. Users can still access their previous and current groups in the Groups page.

[Robbie_Grant]

Ok, so I was just informed that this feature request that came out based on community input actually closes the group off to the Faculty member too.  Why would this feature be implemented in this way?  The instructor should always have access to all of the content in a course, including the Group content.  I am fairly sure that the original request was not intended to lock the Groups down from the course instructor.  Here is Supports response:

"I am sorry the teacher is unable to access the course groups. Unfortunately, this is the intended behavior for a concluded course. In concluding a course, instructors and students can no longer participate in the course. It's just in an archived state. In order for them to have access the course would need to be activated again."

We have a department going through accreditation and they required their students to do work in groups with Pages.  These are no longer available without us having to change the course and section dates.

Anyone else see an issue with this?