Put everything with a deadline into the to-do list

[Beth_Young]

  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...

No matter how many ways I try to direct them otherwise, students start with the "to do" list and don't look at anything else, not the Calendar, not the Syllabus, not the Assignments page. Then they miss deadlines because some types of assignments never appear on the to-do list. Please put everything that has a deadline into the to-do list: reading assignment, practice quiz, homework to be submitted offline, etc.

I tried adding reminders to the things that do show up in the to-do list--for example, in quiz instructions, I said something like, "Remember to read X, do practice quiz Y, do textbook activity Z before you take this quiz." Some students were angry because there were "hidden" assignments inside quizzes. Well, the assignments were not hidden from anyplace . . . EXCEPT from the "to do" list. At the beginning of this semester, I spent a great deal of time personally contacting students who were failing to do assignments, and every single one of them told me "It wasn't on the to-do list so I didn't know I was supposed to do it."

An incomplete list causes more problems than it solves.

  Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the Canvas Production Release Notes (2016-10-29)

[Beth_Young]

On my evaluations, a student just made this comment: "There is too much silly, busy work, and half of it doesn't even appear on the list of things due that week." [emphasis mine]  The "silly busy work" is on me, but not the complaint about the "list of things due." The only place that "to do" items fail to appear is on the darned to do list! It's very frustrating to have students downgrade ME for a problem caused by the software.

 @peytoncraighill ​, can you give us a status update on this issue?

[melissa_ringfie]

I'm really hoping the research into this issue has been moving forward.  This semester, I'm going to make "graded" assignments for everything, including the readings and just deal with the annoyance of having a ridiculously giant grade sheet.  It is frustrating but not nearly as frustrating students missing assignments because of their slavish dependence on the to do list.  Please help us  tell students that they need "to do" everything in the course, not just those things that are being graded for point value.  

[ber1]

please add this feature asap - if an assignment doesn't show up in the calendar, many students simply ignore it. it's also confusing and doesn't make sense. maybe just have a checkmark "include in calendar" that's on by default for everything with a deadline?

[jlg65]

Yes, yes, yes!!!

[Renee_Carney]

  This idea has been developed and is On Canvas Beta How do I access the Canvas beta environment?

For more information, please read through the Canvas Beta Release Notes (2016-10-17)​

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[Beth_Young]

HOORAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  This news makes me very happy!

[Renee_Carney]

  This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For more information, please read through the Canvas Production Release Notes (2016-10-29)

[Renee_Carney]

Thank you to  @Beth_Young  for submitting this idea, as well as, DRBROOKS​, corderg​  @ginan ​, grant.martin​,  @jeffrey_weimer ​,  @jlg65 ​,  @kmeeusen ​,  @kona ​,  @kedgecomb ​,  @melissa_ringfie ​, rgo877​,  @curtain ​, cms_hickss​, snugent​, &  @tvthomas  for your contributions. Your investment in this idea helped refine a feature which is now part of the Canvas!