Assignments published in a module are not visible to all students in module, but are visible in Assignments page

ChadVKealey

This is a bit of a head-scratcher. There is a course where the instructors created three groups and an assignment for each group. There are 14 students in the course which are distributed into those three groups. All three assignments are set with the dates/times shown below. All three were added to a Module in the course, but (importantly) NONE of them were "published".

Due: 5/11/2026 3:00 PM
Available from: 5/11/2026 12:00 PM
Available until: 5/11/2026 3:00 PM

The class was meeting (via Zoom, but that's not relevant) from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM on 5/11. At some point during that meeting, the assignment links in the module were "published". The instructors claim that three of the students were able to see/use the links in the module, but the remaining 11 did not see them. All students were able to see the appropriate assignment link in the Assignments page of the course.

Yesterday, I did some extensive testing of the timing because it appeared that if an assignment was published in a module at or very shortly after the "Available from" date/time, that link would not be visible in the module, but would be in the Assignments page. Unfortunately, when I repeated the same tests today, I'm not seeing the same behavior. That is, I was able to replicate the issue the instructor described yesterday but cannot today.

So, I'm curious if anyone else has seen or experienced similar issues in assignment visibility (ie: students see it in Assignments, but not in a Module)?

Dianna

You're right - this is a head scratcher. I have had a similar report for an in-person course in our K12 district. I have never been able to replicate it but there does seem to be an occasional lag with visibility. It makes it challenging to present it in a support case too. But perhaps we should try. If this is a more widespread issue it can't be addressed until it is on the radar.