This is Ridiculous

[james_m_nugent]

The hours spent on Restorative Justice, Implicit Bias, and on and one and on, and then when I go to learn more about a tool that would ostensibly help improve and enable my ACTUAL teaching, I get this - RIDICULOUS. I'm expected to read a tech manual, a boring tech manual.

This is pointless. Reading this is BORING, it doesn't address my questions (please don't ask me what my questions are, really don't waste your time or mine), it doesn't provide an easy reference to use, in fact I'm  not even sure how this is supposed to flow right after I start it.

Let's be clear, this training is horrible, I wouldn't call it "training", it's "Here, read this and see if you can get something out of this", it's not presented in a way a teacher would present a course, and let me tell you about your product, the thing you're supposedly "training" me on.

Quizzes in Canvas is CLUNKY, time consuming, and oh so VERY NOT user-friendly. I can't tell Quizzes to create a quiz with 20, numbered blank questions that I can then fill in - no, I have to create 20 individual questions, set the font style and size for each, the placement (whether right, center or left adjusted) for EACH individual question, and be careful that I'm following a correct sequence in the flow of my questions because while I can move my questions around within the quiz, moving them doesn't automatically re-number them so if I take #19 and decide to move it to the #2 slot, nearly every question has to be re-numbered by me, there's no automatic feature that sees what I did and then re-numbers on it's own.

I can go on, but this is pointless. And don't for a second think that I haven't used Quizzes in Canvas EXTENSIVELY. Go to Commons, put in my name, and see how many Quizzes I created (205 - wow, does that make me something more than a "Community Novice"? Badges are great for kids in elementary school, they don't mean quite the same thing for an experienced teacher), and they've ALL been a pain in the butt to make because of how not user-friendly this system is. Also, the search feature in Commons is not user-friendly, it simply pops up modules, doesn't show dates for when the module was created in the pop up after you search (you have to go into the individual modules to see what you're looking for), it makes more work for you then it's worth move than half the time.

Your product is bad, and this training is an insult to a teacher.

[RichardMcLean]

Hi James, I understand exactly what you mean. That's the reason I joined this group, to make suggestions to enhance the product. The product has some nice features, but as you stated, some things can be improved.

[james_m_nugent]

I'm honestly oblivious to the "Nice" features at this point.

I haven't much else to say regarding the "training" that was provided for this - that is encapsulated in the "This is Ridiculous" title of how I started this.

I've done so many quizzes in Canvas, over 200, nearly all of them original, i.e. I built the quiz from start to finish. Some of the content may be taken from somewhere else, but the actual quiz is something I built. A few of the quizzes are downloaded from someone else, but even those I've gotten into them and added/subtracted to them so even those I feel by and large comfortable with saying that they're mine.

With that many quizzes, I can't tell you how much time was wasted having to build each individual question, setting the font size for every question. I don't use the font set by Canvas, it's too small, I always use 14, which me I have to individually set each question to 14, and I can go on. This is ridiculous (there's that word again), and it's an extraordinary time suck, and I can't begin to believe that this can't be done better on the part of Canvas, not with how I see things done in other places. When I first started using Canvas to build quizzes, which was during the pandemic, I figured these were part of some sort of growing pains, they had to get something out fast and they'd improve on it; they never did.

Frankly I don't have much hope for this being improved by the vendor - they've been getting away with this substandard product for a long time now, and changing it to something that actually was helpful and easy to use for teachers would cost money, and it's easier to provide substandard product because it's cheap, than it is to spend money on something that teachers can really use that's user-friendly and respects teachers' time.

Good luck with your attempt to enhance this - for as long as this product has been out there I'm hard pressed to believe that we're the only ones in all that time to complain like this, and we can see what there is to show for anyone who came before us.