Activating Module causes all inactive items to be activated. Why?

[cfmoxey]

As an instructor, if I have an inactive Module with numerous items, some of which are deliberately inactivated, others not, upon activating the Module, all items become activated. This means I have to [once again] inactivate those items I do not *currently* want to be active. This is annoying at best. Would it not make more sense to leave the active/inactive status of items in the Module alone? This is another case where Blackboard, despite its many faults, was much more sensible.

Oh, and don’t even get me started on Canvas’s inability to have a simple way to globally reassign point values in a quiz.

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Good morning, @cfmoxey ...

I feel your pain with the modules issue.  Even though I am not an instructor, I do build courses for our faculty.  There are times when I want to keep something unpublished in a module (and I've not yet published the module), and then when I do publish the module, those unpublished items get published...and I have to unpublish them again.  (In fact, I had this exact scenario yesterday.)  Although there isn't any way to prevent this (that I know of, anyway), I know there are others here that have the same frustration.  In searching the Canvas Community, I found a Feature Idea called Stop Canvas Modules from Auto-Publishing All Content Inside a Module When a Module is Published.  I would suggest that you review this Feature Idea to see if is similar to what you'd like to see as a standard part of Canvas.  You can give it a star rating as well as leave a comment there as to why this would be important to you.  If you can provide real-world examples...all the better for Canvas engineers!  This Guide, How do idea conversations work in the Instructure Community?, gives detail on the star rating system for Feature Ideas.

I know this might not be the answer you were looking for, but I hope it has helped to answer your question.