When selecting a course to compose a message, how do you know which semester, which section?

Question

When I go to send a message to the students in one of my courses, the drop down list includes multiple instances of the course. Some of these instances are from previous semesters; some are different sections from the same semester. There seems to be no rhyme or reason o the order in which they appear, and neither the semester nor the section is evident. Now, I know that I can go to the dashboard and give each course a nickname. That solves the problem, but I shouldn't have to do that. Courses from previous semesters shouldn't show up in that list above current semester courses; and they should all be identifiable by semester and section. Am I missing something? Is there some way to fix this on my end? Or is this just a major Ux failure?

Chris · Accepted Answer

Hi @GalenBrokaw,

As a Canvas admin for my institution, I'd honestly say that this is something your school/institution should handle in the integration between your student information system (like PowerSchool, Banner, PeopleSoft, etc) and Canvas.  I feel like it is a something that often gets overlooked when implementing a new LMS, but is really important to users.

Here is an example of ours:

As you can see, we have the term, course subject, number, and section there, along with a title (if the course is not crosslisted).  So it's definitely possible to include relevant info in the titles, but you may need to start a conversation with your local Canvas team to discuss it further.

I hope this info is helpful!

-Chris