In module settings, hide the sequential order checkbox until completion requirements are set

[tdelillo]

  This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

This is copied from the old community, original submitted by Tom Gibbons on March 19th, 2015:

Hide the "Students must move through requirements in this module in sequential order" checkbox until at least one completion requirement is set. Even the video guide is misleading in the language used to describe this process: https://player.vimeo.com/video/72433447 Around the 1:55 mark, it says that this checkbox requires students to move through the module content items in sequential order, not that it requires students to move through the *module requirements* in sequential order. Hiding this checkbox until it will actually do something would ensure that the setting isn't applied incorrectly.

My addition:

As an alternative to hiding the checkbox until requirements are defined, give a warning message if a user tries to save the "Students must move..." setting without adding requirements. Something like...

  Comments from Instructure

For more information on the release of this feature, and others, please review the Canvas Production Release Notes (2015-10-31)

[biray]

Thank you for your post,  @tdelillo ​.

I can see where this idea would be useful.

On the other hand, do you think teachers may want students to go through a module in a sequential order without requirements? For instance, if they just want a student to progress through a series of pages in order? If it's a big module with lots of pages, they may not want to add "view page" requirement to every item in the module.

I guess I've always see the sequential criteria and pre-requisites as mutually exclusive.

What do you think? Looking forward to your additional thoughts.

[tdelillo]

I guess I've always see the sequential criteria and pre-requisites as mutually exclusive.

Agreed. This request focuses only on the module completion requirements and the associated sequential order checkbox.

The "Students must move through requirements in sequential order" checkbox does not do anything unless requirements are defined. That is the main purpose of this feature idea - to make it clearer to the person building the modules that they CANNOT just check that box and enforce sequential order of all the items that have been added to the module. This is a very frequent - and very understandable - mistake that instructors make.

Which raises another alternative possibility - instead of hiding the option until requirements are defined, or giving a warning message that no requirements have been defined, change "Students must move through requirements in sequential order" to "Students must move through module items in sequential order", and have it actually function as a 1-click way to enforce sequential completion.

[biray]

Ah, gotcha! Thanks for the clarification! I can absolutely understand how instructors might make this mistake unknowingly. In fact, I'm sure I've probably checked this box under these assumptions, as well.

This idea will be open for voting in the next voting cycle. Looking forward to reading the community feedback!

[tom_gibbons]

​I think most people read this box as all module items, rather than required module items.

I think the all items in sequential order (regardless of whether requirements are set) is what most people would prefer. In fact, this option would address much of the clamoring I've been hearing about people wanting to disable the To Do list, or other methods to prevent students from jumping right to the assignment, rather than doing preliminary scaffolding work first. (Of course the current module tools allow for this too, but perhaps making this easy option available in the module creation process would make things faster for all course creators.)

[powellj]

I'm so glad this was here, as I'm ashamed to admit, I had believed those two options to be unrelated. I have been teaching our faculty that they can simply check the box to require all module items to be done in order (without listing module requirements). Now understanding how this option actually works, it seems much more logical to me that the 'in order' checkbox *should* be mutually exclusive to the defined module completion requirements. I really hope this gets the needed number of votes now because this needs to be addressed.

[tom_gibbons]

I really disagree about the mutual exclusivity of these functions. I need both in place at once:

I need students to read through the content in a module and then complete the assessment at the end of the module to a certain level of mastery before they move on. They can't complete the assessment without first reading the content--not that they may or may not be able to, but that they flatly can't (or at least 90% of them can't).

Regardless, the primary issue is that the checkbox is easily misconstrued. I have yet to meet someone who didn't misunderstand what it does; I run the training for all of the new Canvas faculty on two campuses--a few hundred people a year.

[tom_gibbons]

Hey everyone--

It looks like this has already been implemented.

The sequential order checkbox is now invisible until a completion requirement is added.

Sneaky! And awesome.

[jordan]

Oooooh! I like that idea of doing what you suggested and having it be a "1-click way to enforce sequential completion" Of course if the feature functioned that way then the minimal requirement criteria would probably have to be the default (which would be "view the content item")

[jordan]

 @tom_gibbons ​ I noticed this last week as well. I didn't know if it was a glitch in the system or an actual newly implemented feature. Let me pull in erinhallmark and  @Renee_Carney  (some new feature experts) to see if they have any clarification here...

[Renee_Carney]

 @tom_gibbons ​, you are correct!  This feature was implemented a while ago.  I don't recall when.

The feature function is to be invisible until at least one requirement is set.