Teachers using Code.org's courses can use the "Visible / Hidden" feature to choose which units and lessons their students can see and access. This feature can be used for a variety of reasons:
- Keep students from rushing ahead: If you want your students to not work past a certain lesson or unit, you can hide all the lessons or units that you don't want them to see yet. When it’s time to work on a lesson you’ve hidden, you can just switch the toggle back to “visible” again.
- Make the course feel less overwhelming for students: Hide all the units or lessons the class isn't working on yet to make the course feel more approachable. Unhide units or lessons one-at-a-time when the class reaches that point in the course.
- Shorten a course: Have limited time to teach computer science? You can hide lessons or units you know you don't want to cover so your students don't see them.
How do I hide and show lessons?
Step 1: On your Teacher homepage, locate the class section for which you'd like to hide or show course content. Open the "Jump to" dropdown menu on that card and select the unit name at the top of the list. This will take you to the Course page for that unit.
If you have assigned a course but not a unit, you will see a "Go to course" button in place of the "Jump to" dropdown menu. This button will also take you to the Course page, but you will see content for the entire course instead of for the assigned unit. To view content for a specific unit, click the "Go to unit" button on the card for the unit you want to view.
Alternatively, if you are already viewing content for a class section, you can click on "Course" in the gray sidebar on the left-hand side of the page. To change which class section you are viewing, use the "Class Sections" dropdown menu at the top of the gray sidebar.
Step 2: Each lesson defaults to being visible. To hide them, you can do one of the following:
Option A: You can hide all lessons in a unit using the "Hide All Lessons" button at the top of the page. If you've previously hidden any lessons in the unit, the "Show All Lessons" button will make all the lessons in the unit visible to students in that class section.
Option B: To hide or show individual lessons, click on “Hidden” to hide a lesson from students and “Visible” to show it again. You’ll still be able to access the puzzles, but students in that class section will not see them.
Visible lesson:
Hidden lesson:
How do I hide and show full units?
This functionality is not available for every course.
Step 1: Go to the "Course" page for the class section you want to hide the unit for.
Step 2: If the Course page is displaying content for a specific unit, you will need to switch it to show the content for the entire course. To do this, click on the name of the course at the top of the page.
Step 3: Once you've viewing the list of units for the entire course, locate the unit you want to hide or show. Click on “Hidden” to hide a unit from students and “Visible” to show it again. You’ll still be able to access the unit, but your students will not see it.
Visible unit:
Hidden unit:
Why can’t some of my students see some of the units or lessons? I don’t have anything hidden.
Check this: Make sure you have assigned the given course or unit to your class section. This will ensure that any units and lessons you have set as visible in the course are also visible to your students.
Check this next: It is possible that your students are also enrolled in another teacher’s class section and that teacher has hidden those units or lessons. For any affected student who still cannot see a unit/lesson you are certain you've marked as visible, it's likely they are in another class section of yours (or another teacher's), and that lesson or unit is marked as hidden from them.
To check, have any affected student sign in to Code.org and visit their homepage. On the homepage, have them scroll to the very bottom of the page, where they will see a list of all the class sections they have joined and the names of the teachers who own those class sections.
You can then get in touch with other teachers to request they either un-hide the lesson or remove the student from their class section.
Why can some of my students still see the units or lessons I tried to hide?
Check this first: Make sure your students have a student account and are enrolled in your class section. No units or lessons will get hidden for a teacher account or for a student account without a teacher.
Check this next: Are these students enrolled in another teacher's class section? If a student is enrolled in another teacher’s class section and that teacher has assigned the same course to your students, they may be overriding your hidden / visible settings.
If you know the teacher (in the case of co-teaching for example), make sure the other teacher hides the same units and lessons as what you want to hide.
Otherwise, there is no good way around this without the other teacher un-assigning the given course or the student dropping out of the other teacher’s class section.
I assigned a unit to my students, but when they try to go to that unit, they can't see it. Why?
Check this first: We have generally seen this happen because teachers have hidden the unit on the course overview page even though they have the lessons visible on the unit overview page. To check if this is what's happening, do the following
Step 1: Go to the Course page. If the Course page is displaying content for a specific unit, you will need to switch it to show the content for the entire course. To do this, click on the name of the course at the top of the page.
Step 2: Make sure you have the correct class section selected in the "Class sections" dropdown, located at the top of the gray sidebar on the left-hand side of the page.
Step 3: Once you select the class section, you will be able to see all the units that are hidden and visible for that section. Make sure the assigned unit is set to visible.
Check this next: If some of your students are still not seeing the unit, double check that they are not in another class section. To check, have any affected student sign in to Code.org and visit their homepage. On the homepage, have them scroll to the very bottom of the page, where they will see a list of all the class sections they have joined and the names of the teachers who own those class sections.
You can then get in touch with other teachers to request they either un-hide the unit or remove the student from their class section.