[Modules] Stop Canvas Modules from Auto-Publishing All Content Inside a Module When a Module is Published

[khearn1]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

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My university is finding the fact that publishing a module auto-publishes all the content in it quite annoying.

I would like to be able to just publish a module and then choose what features of it that I wish to publish.

I know that I can set a limiter on when a student can actually see and interact with materials-but if a professor is uncertain about publishing certain content all at once, they have no options.

This has been asked about several times in the community-I snagged two of the best examples below.

Thank you all for your time and your vote!

[HJB]

I agree!  It's frustrating to have to remember which elements are published or not as I open new modules. To add another level of red tape, some of the elements have a pop up with radio buttons I need to click to confirm the level of "unpublished" it will be. Not keeping the original settings when I make the module public for students seems unnecessarily complicated while considering how many instructors use them now. 

[bcalnan]

There is nothing else to add to the conversation besides my support. This needs to be addressed by Canvas.

[Melton]

Please allow the ability to publish modules without publishing everything within the module. 

[BrianCuthbert]

Four years later and this is still a problem. Please make it possible to publish a module without publishing EVERY item in the module. This only makes sense. 

[DavidAhlemann]

I have modules that contain up to a dozen lessons.  It is quite frustrating when I publish the module and it automatically publishes all of those lessons.  While I can unpublish them it is an additional step I would rather not have to take

[jeff_lee]

Every time I publish a new module in a course, all of the content is immediately visible to students. I would NEVER want this to be the case. I then have to spend minutes unpublishing all of the items in the module until the time arrives for the students to see those assignments. This is time-consuming and annoying. Please make a new option to leave all content unpublished when a module is published.

[WendyG3]

I agree, this default "auto publish all content" is a terrible way to run a course.  Ultimately this affects students because as soon as I publish a new module, students get notices that they have many, many assignments to do. I explain to them the restrictions Canvas puts on publishing a module and that I have since hidden the assignments they shouldn't do or even know about yet. It stresses the student out! It also violates the integrity of assignments because it is possible students see material before I get a chance to unpublish it.  Please create a way to publish a module without publishing everything in the module at the same time.

[dbeeson]

In response to @WendyG3: I work around this design flaw by doing what you do BEFORE publishing the course at the beginning of the term.

Yes, it is a hassle however it solves the problem of students getting notified because the course itself is still unpublished.

The only potential issue is the students can see all module headings from day 1 but they are empty until I publish the content inside of them - on my timeline. Hope that works for you.

[hallale]

This is a HUGE problem for me. Even when I manually unpublish certain assignments within the newly published module, I will often find, when I go back, that Canvas has surreptitiously re-published them! I've had students do the wrong quiz, which then requires me to delete the entire Quiz assignment to be able to get rid of their grade and allow me to re-unpublish it. Because Canvas only keeps course materials for fewer than two years, I keep multiple versions of items within each module, some for online versions and some for in-person, some for spring semesters and some for fall, and I need to be able to CONTROL which ones the students can access without Canvas willy nilly publishing some of them for me.

[James]

@hallale

It can be frustrating to have Canvas publish all those items when you don't want them to. Setting that aside for a moment, there are some things you mentioned that I felt I should address.

Canvas does not impose a time limit on how long the course content is kept --- I still have my access to the first courses I taught with Canvas back in August 2012. If your content is disappearing, then that would be an institutional decision, not something on Canvas side. I cannot speak to the content retention period for Canvas Free for Teachers.

Having a lot of crud (unused content) in a course can slow it down. Although Canvas allows you to keep all those flavors of content within a single course, it isn't really a best practice for a live course with students in it. You'll also see that your pages load slower when there is a lot of content.

One thing you might consider doing is to use a course export to download the content to your local computer. Then you can restore it as needed and you have a copy of it after your institution has removed the content.

I'm not recommending it, but you could maintain separate modules for the different flavors of your course. Then you would only need to publish the Spring Online modules or the Fall In-Person modules. That will reduce the chance of publishing the wrong content.

At our institution, the recommended approach is to maintain a sandbox where development of the course happens and develop everything there before the course opens to students. That allows you to catch issues before students take the wrong version. If your institution deletes courses, then definitely back this up. Perhaps they don't delete sandbox courses like they do courses with students so you don't have to worry. Double check with your Canvas team to see what can be done. From the sandbox course, you can import some or all of the content into the course that you're teaching.

You might also reach out to your local Canvas team to see if they can give you some tips on how to better work with the system. There are often alternative approaches to do things that people just don't know about because they've not had it explained to them. This is especially true of institutions that threw everyone into Canvas without training or with people who came from a different learning management system and thought they didn't need the Canvas training because they knew how to use the other system.