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Hi I think it would be very beneficial to allow the My Courses module setting "group by term" to be toggled as a default setting.
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Group by Term by Default
- Comment • 79
Hi I think it would be very beneficial to allow the My Courses module setting "group by term" to be toggled as a default setting.
| Product Version (if applicable): | 0 |
default setting,
i need it.
Why is this not open for voting?
Definitely this one! Please! I did post directions on how to do this and send e-mails. But anytime I have to access a course as a user, I check to see if the user has made the change and did it for them. Almost no one has ever done it themselves and no one has ever complained when I did it for them.
I agree! I have helped numerous users change this to group by term.
I do the same thing for users Cheryl!
My institution has wanted this option for years. Just about every user prefers it, but so few of them know it's available.
Robert Utter You are wrong. Group by term *as a default setting* is NOT available. Hence, the proposed change. Right now, users are the only ones who can set their own My courses tab to that view. System Admins, instructors, etc. cannot do it. This is the functionality being requested in this idea.
Yes, I understand that. I'll rephrase in case it's more clear:
My institution has wanted [group by term as a default setting] for years. Just about every user prefers [group by term], but so few of them know it's available.
This would be very useful! Students get overwhelmed by the general disorganization and number of courses available in the course menu by default. Grouping by Term allows students a much more intuitive way to find their courses.
+1
+1
Agreed! Marissa Dimino - why can't we vote on this one? We all really want this feature! Pleeeeeaaaassseeee!
Definitely, having this feature would be very useful!
This would be wonderful. Many users never find this feature and it is very useful. The Course List module could still have the default of Not Grouping by Term, so people could look at it either way.
As Managed Hosting clients, we discussed the following article from Blackboard Community (https://community.blackboard.com/thread/1802) that states that there is a line that can be added to a table to make "Group by Term" the default setting for all users in the courses module.
However; this suggestion is designed for Self Hosted clients.
Blackboard suggested we submit this as an idea (we did and our moving our comment here) for Managed Hosting clients as it is currently not a supported option available to us.
Where is the idea filed, so it can be supported?
People have been begging for this for years.
Mine is archived with the suggestion I post my comment here.
+1 !!
Yes! Please! Make Group by Term a global setting.
Agree. Would be very useful.
+1 to this but can I also suggest that the ordering of terms be set so terms are ordered by date (newest first), at least by default.
Ah, good idea. We have our terms all set to "continuous", but we're looking at maybe changing that this year. Chronological ordering does seem like it would be useful!
+1
and also to Laren's suggestion that suggest that the ordering of terms be set so terms are ordered by date (newest first), by default.
Yes, please...
+1!
+1!
I see this idea is currently marked as "Under review" - can anyone from Blackboard confirm what this means please? Does this mean we've convinced you that we all want this, and you're considering it for a future release? If not, please can we vote on this to show our support for the idea?
Hi, Kimberly Gibson, Chris Boon, and others. The general outline of the review and voting process is outlined here: Idea Review Process. That page used to be under the Featured Content area of the main Ideas page, but looks like it was un-featured somehow. I've placed it back in the Featured Content so it's more easily discovered. At a high level, the summary is that all ideas come in to the Under Review stage by default. So anything that has not yet been moved to another stage will be in the Under Review stage. If an idea doesn't gain much interest from the community, I'll eventually move it to the Archived stage. That does not mean that it has been deleted or removed in any way, it is just a category like any other stage. If an idea in the Archived stage comes to be more popular over time, I move it to the For Future Consideration stage. For Future Consideration is the category I'm using for ideas that are popular with the community and/or something we are researching or interested in building. That is generally where we're pulling ideas from for voting. If you have any additional questions about the process, please post them on the page I linked above and we'll continue the conversation!
Thanks so much, Brad! This is really helpful.
Hope that you soon will be starting a fun weekend!
Cheers,
Kimber
With respect, some feature requests are so obvious and long-overdue that the idea sharing and voting mechanisms end up feeling like an attempt to sideline or avoid development. The hours and energy spent engineering this Idea Review Process could have been spent developing intuitive and basic product UI that, quite frankly, all clients have needed for years. I have never met a single Learn user who didn't benefit from organizing their courses by term, and I've only encountered a handful that figured out how to set this up on their own.
If Blackboard employees spent more time using their products (the ones we all use, such as Learn 9.1) in authentic situations they, too, would see the need for such simple, obvious, and intuitive functionality and the user community wouldn't need to defend the universal necessity of such things via community voting.
Hello, everyone. I know it's not much help for institutions using the Original experience, but I wanted to share that this is exactly how courses are displayed the Ultra experience. I'll keep this on my list for our next round of voting for Original ideas, which should be happening around the second half of October.
Thank you!
Please add this option Original. Both Student and Faculty would benefit.
Please add this option - I agree that both students and faculty would benefit!
Definitely gets my vote
+1!
+1
Please add this option!
Yes, please! And if you could have terms sorted by date added by default, that would also be a wonderful thing!
+1
Yes!
Yes, definitely add this as an option!
YES, YES and YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Brad Evans, Thanks for your feedback.
Thanks for folks for suggesting this as a default. This would be very useful to students, faculty, and staff that folks here supporT.
I hope that idea makes it to the next round of voting in October and there appears to be many supporting it.
Cheers,
Toni P.
I hear in a conversation this can be done with a script from database to change the default, is this true? Can you help us, this could be a temporary solution while try to develop the final solution.
Does anyone have the script??
What happened in "October" ? There was talk about this idea coming up for a vote?
Brad Evans, can you give an update?
Birgitte
Hello, everyone. Somewhat related to Tom's point above, we have decided to skip voting for this idea and put it directly in to our backlog for a future release. I do not yet have an exact release to share, but it could be as soon as our fall 2018 release for self-hosted and managed hosting clients. Thank you all for your enthusiastic feedback and willingness to share your needs with us. I truly appreciate it and hope to continue making our applications more effective and easier to use.
This is Great News!
That sounds great, Brad.
If possible - I would suggest that in addition to Group by term as default, the default display should be sorted as "most recent term first (top of list) and expanded", followed by "previous terms, collapsed".
Regards, Birgitte
That's a really good point Birgitte Balslev - having the most recent term at the top would be very useful. I've shown faculty how to change the order of the terms, but having them in date order would avoid having to do this.
YES YES YES !!! how soon will it be available ?
a default system wide ?
Yes please!!!!
We'd like this please.
Definitely would make the user experience so much better.
Agree also with "most recent first".
Sharon
Thumbs up and plus one and like and whatever else indicates a resounding YES!
+1
Great idea +1
I see it's now Planned - when for please?
Agree!
Group by term is so much more useful to students/staff than the default !!
Does anyone know if this was implemented in Q2 2018?
Not as far as I can see; it's not listed on the Q2 2018 release notes, and I can't see anything obvious on my Q2 2018 test system.
We asked for this several years ago. Even though we've provided instructions on the enrolments tab telling users how to do this for themselves, there are many that haven't picked up on this and instead complain of their long list of courses.
I agree Helena Bampton - we're in the same boat, many of our faculty are missing out on this functionality as they don't realise they have to select the Order by Term option. This is such a quick win if we can get it into the product; as Belinda Green said back in March, it's now showing as "Planned", but I've not seen it on the roadmap yet....can Trey Buck give us an update please?
Yes this constantly comes up from our staff and students flagged this many times when we asked them what would improve their experience of the VLE! Would be very welcome here.
I see the status of this idea is now "Planned" - this sounds very promising! Brad Evans - would you be able to tell us when we can expect this please?
This need to be there a long time ago. When?
+1 Carolyn!
Being on a SaaS release I haven't seen this come through yet. Brad Evans, you said that it could be fall 2018 for release. Do you have anything more firm yet?
For the first time we are going to make previous year's modules available to our students and there is a worry in some areas that not having a clear distinction between each academic year will cause problems for students resitting courses.
We need this sooner rather than later really.
This enhancement is still on the table for Original environments, but I do not have an ETA for a release. If you were to move to the Ultra base navigation, courses would be organized by term by default, regardless of the course experience (Original vs. Ultra).
Hi Brad,
Thank you for getting back to me. Considering the conversations in this thread, I think it is quite disappointing that there is nothing moving towards a firm release of this feature.
Unfortunately, we are bound by technology (IE11), which is stopping us from adopting base navigation at the moment so there isn't really an alternative for us. ith a bit of luck we can move away from IE11 by December and we can adopt base navigation then.
This is a major downfall in our users experience - we create courses each year, prefixed with the year, so staff and students can have a long list of up to 50 or 60 courses, with the most current year sorted to the bottom. Most don't know how to access the setting "Group by Term" and in any case, having each user make this change manually is not the best solution. Having this as a system setting turned on by default would be so helpful for our users.
Today marks the 2 year mark of this idea being proposed by BbSS Managed Hosting, with many asking for it for many years prior. Brad Evans commented 1 year ago, with hope that we might see this feature by Fall 2018, but that window has come and gone. Yes, it's available with Ultra Base, but Bb has said time and time again that it's committed to the 9.1 experience. Can anybody at Bb provide a realistic timeline for this "planned" idea?
My team is doing the work to implement Terms for the first time, and after stumbling upon this thread yesterday, to say that I'm disappointed would be an understatement. Based on this thread, there seems to be no way to implement this via the 9.1 GUI and no way to implement this on the back end via MH. Am I misunderstanding anything here?
Hello, Chris. I don't believe you're misunderstanding anything. You might be able to change all users' settings to group by term from the database, but there is no way in the UI to set the course list to group by term by default for everyone at once. Users could make this setting on their own as well, but that's user-by-user. This is still on our list of things we'd like to do in the Original experience, but any timeline I could offer at this time would be an irresponsible guess.
Group by term would definitely be helpful at the system level. Also, to be able to sort the terms by chronological order by default so the most recent could be at the top. This would be helpful at the user or system level.
That's a brilliant idea Laura Sheehy - we have the same issue, with the oldest term appearing at the top by default. I hope this can be added to the idea here.
I had a really useful call with Oleg Figlin, VP Europe, Dominic Gore and Brent Mundy about this and other enhancements to Learn Original last week. Dom pointed out that Blackboard is very aware that the My Courses module in Learn Original doesn't meet the needs of many clients, and therefore they've looked enhancements to this that have been developed by other institutions, such as those by Sandra Stevenson-Revill at Derby, and a course search facility at Leeds, and have included this functionality into the course list in Ultra base navigation. This includes a course search, the ability to favourite courses that are used the most, and importantly, that courses are managed by term by default.
Although moving to Ultra isn't an easy fix for this, they did point out that you only need Ultra base navigation to take advantage of this feature, not Ultra courses.
In the mean time, Dom and Brent have kindly agreed to look into this to see if it's something that could be added to Learn Original; Dom pointed out changing the default to be Group by Term may adversely affect some clients who wouldn't want this, so the solution would have to be a configurable admin option to say if group by term was the default or not. I'd definitely be happy with this as a solution.
With thanks to Oleg for making this call happen, and Dom and Brent for their help with this.
I Agree
Agree! Group by term is so much more useful to students/staff than the default.