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Canvas glitch?

Started by arcturus, August 22, 2021, 09:45:48 AM

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arcturus

I am in the process of setting up my courses for the fall term. My process is to create a template course in Canvas, which I can modify during the semester to capture changes that I want to implement the next time I teach the course, and then copy that template into the course shell for the classes I am actually teaching. This time, however, one of the crucial "pages" did not copy during the first attempt to copy the course content. I re-copied the pages section of the template course and that file did come over the second time. However, Canvas then said that that page was "disabled" when I went into "student view". I copied (by hand) the content of that page into a newly created page so it is now visible to the students. My question to the fora is whether they have seen anything like this before in Canvas. I do not know why this page (and not any of the others) was problematic.

Caracal

Quote from: arcturus on August 22, 2021, 09:45:48 AM
I am in the process of setting up my courses for the fall term. My process is to create a template course in Canvas, which I can modify during the semester to capture changes that I want to implement the next time I teach the course, and then copy that template into the course shell for the classes I am actually teaching. This time, however, one of the crucial "pages" did not copy during the first attempt to copy the course content. I re-copied the pages section of the template course and that file did come over the second time. However, Canvas then said that that page was "disabled" when I went into "student view". I copied (by hand) the content of that page into a newly created page so it is now visible to the students. My question to the fora is whether they have seen anything like this before in Canvas. I do not know why this page (and not any of the others) was problematic.

No, but Canvas is generally buggy and annoying.

mamselle

Whenever I had to use Canvas, I did everything in either Word or Excel or PPt first and copied-and-pasted (text) or attached (files) rather than try to fight with it. I saved all my changes and new ideas the same way, in a separate file on my own hard drive.

No sense losing all your good will over a grubby computer system.

If you go elsewhere, it's also yours to work from, not theirs to take, fold, bend, spindle, or mutilate.

M.
Forsake the foolish, and live; and go in the way of understanding.

Reprove not a scorner, lest they hate thee: rebuke the wise, and they will love thee.

Give instruction to the wise, and they will be yet wiser: teach the just, and they will increase in learning.

hungry_ghost

Quote from: arcturus on August 22, 2021, 09:45:48 AM
I am in the process of setting up my courses for the fall term. My process is to create a template course in Canvas, which I can modify during the semester to capture changes that I want to implement the next time I teach the course, and then copy that template into the course shell for the classes I am actually teaching. This time, however, one of the crucial "pages" did not copy during the first attempt to copy the course content. I re-copied the pages section of the template course and that file did come over the second time. However, Canvas then said that that page was "disabled" when I went into "student view". I copied (by hand) the content of that page into a newly created page so it is now visible to the students. My question to the fora is whether they have seen anything like this before in Canvas. I do not know why this page (and not any of the others) was problematic.

Interesting. I had a similar situation, also "pages". I was rolling over a course from last year. The page copied just fine, but no way no how could I make it viewable in student view. So I made a new page, and no way could I make the new one visible to students either. I spent much too much time on this and became very frustrated. I said $^&@&*)!!! so loudly that the cat jumped. For a few moments I even contemplated defenestrating my computer. Then, I figured out a workaround similar to yours.

My workaround: I "duplicated" a page that was viewable to students and then I renamed it and pasted the broken, invisible-to-students page content into it.  (and I made an extra duplicate of the non-broken page, unpublished it, called it "this works" and have it as a backup)

So yes, Canvas is buggy.

arcturus

It is good to know that I am not alone! The problem itself was frustrating, but the extra work required to provide the link to the newly created replacement page was also annoying (did I mention that this was one of the crucial pages for the course, so it was linked from many many other places...). It also makes me worried that other parts of the course are broken. I have thousands of files associated with this class, so I cannot possibly click on all of the links to verify that they are valid. I have used the "validate links" option, but that did not notify me of the problems with this page regarding student view being disabled, so it seems of limited utility to catch this type of problem. Oh well. I assume students will complain if they cannot access course content.

Langue_doc

I might have had a similar problem last year. I promptly called Tech Support who helped resolve the problem.