[Assignments] Allow Student to Sign Up
Currently, students who are working on separate sections of an assignment must be assigned manually to different tasks. For example, in a nursing research course, some students are responsible for one section of an essay, while others work on a different section. Once all sections are complete, the students will merge their contributions and submit the final product as a group assignment. However, faculty face challenges in Canvas when not all students are required to complete the same assignment. There is no straightforward way to indicate that some students aren't participating in a specific task without assigning multiple due dates or excusing certain students in the grade book. For large classes, this is quite time-consuming. This issue leads to confusion, as the assignment still appears on the to-do list for students who are not responsible for it.
Implementing a system that allows students to self-assign to assignments would streamline the assignment process and reduce the necessity for creating multiple assignments or establishing various due dates. Faculty would have the capability to determine whether an assignment is open for self-selection, much like they currently do for group assignments and peer review options. If the option is not checked, it will be assigned to everyone by default (as is the current behavior). Once an assignment is set to be self-selected, students will be presented with a comprehensive list of available assignments. This list would provide them with the flexibility to choose one or more assignments that they are required to complete. As a result, students would only be responsible for the assignments they select, avoiding any confusion about which tasks they are meant to complete. This feature would significantly reduce faculty workload when creating multi-level assignments.
admin,instructor
