Courses disappeared from faculty dashboard - why?

[aaron_bahmer]

An instructor contacted me to say many of his current term course tiles disappeared from his dashboard. Upon checking the Courses > All Courses area, we found that *NONE* of his current term classes had the filled-in star -- not even the ones that were still visible. I had him click the stars of those that weren't visible and then he *only* had those classes he had selected. He went back and selected the others he wanted to see and could then see them all again. So, problem solved.

The real question is why this happened in the first place.

It may be coincidental, but several courses were pushed by API to our instance of Canvas for next term and he now has several unpublished courses visible on his dashboard for that term (note, also not starred).

Could it be a browser cache issue? I doubt it because, as admin acting as user, I saw exactly what he saw - not all expected courses & un-filled stars as explained above.

Any ideas as to the why???

[aaron_bahmer]

...and same instructor again. Clearing the cache did not resolve the issue.

[lgekeler]

Hey @aaron_bahmer 

Not coincidental. Unfortunately the new term pushes non-favorited course sites off the Dashboard. To keep them, the instructor has to favorite his sites. I imagine this answer is "a day late and a dollar short."  But anyway, there it is.

[aaron_bahmer]

Thank you, @lgekeler, for that comment.

This raises another question. When a new term begins, typically all classes a user (student or instructor) is enrolled in sit on the Dashboard view. Why? No one marked them as favorite (the filled-in star); they just appear.

Except when they don't and I guide the user to Courses > All Courses where we have the star conversation. So why don't some classes for the current term display on the Dashboard?

There's a certain inconsistency here that is troublesome.

[lgekeler]

@aaron_bahmer I agree. Sometimes there seems to be no rhyme or reason to which sites appear on the Dashboard and which ones don't!