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.
Read on to learn how to hide and show lessons and units.
How do I hide and show lessons?
To hide (or unhide) a lesson, first go to the course overview page (in CS Fundamentals) or the unit overview page (in CS Discoveries and CS Principles) for the course you want to adjust.
Step 1: Pick the section you want to adjust lessons for from the "Select Section" dropdown to reveal the "Hidden / Visible" toggles on the lessons:
Step 2: 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 your students will not see them.
Visible lesson:
Hidden lesson:
How do I hide and show full units? (CS Discoveries and CS Principles only)
To hide a unit, first go to the course overview page for CS Principles or CS Discoveries.
Step 1: Pick the section you want to adjust units for from the "Select Section" dropdown to reveal the "Hidden / Visible" toggles on the units:
Step 2: 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 don’t I see the hidden / visible toggles for the lessons / units?
There are a couple reasons you might not be seeing the toggles:
- The course you’re using doesn’t currently support hiding and showing lessons. Currently only CS Fundamentals courses, CS Principles units, and CS Discoveries units support the feature.
- You need to make sure a section is selected from the section dropdown before the toggles are shown.
Why can’t some of my students see some of the units or lessons? I don’t have anything hidden.
Check this: It is possible that your students are also enrolled in another teacher’s section who has hidden those units or lessons.
If you assign the given course to your class via the teacher dashboard, you can ensure that any units and lessons you have set as visible in the course are also visible to your students.
Check this next: 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 section of yours (or another teacher's), and that lesson or unit is marked as hidden from them).
Just have any affected student sign in and visit their homepage and have them check the very bottom of this page. This will list out all the sections they are in, and the names of the teachers who own that section.
You can then get in touch with other teachers to request they either un-hide the lesson in question, or remove the student from their 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 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 section? If a student is enrolled in another teacher’s 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 section.
I assigned a unit to my students but when they try to go to that unit, they cannot 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 overview page for CS Principles or CS Discoveries.
Step 2: Make sure you select the right section from the "Select section" dropdown:
Step 3: Once you select the 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 classroom section. You can do this by asking them to go to sign into their account and scroll to the bottom of their dashboard. Underneath "Classroom sections," they should be able to see all the sections they are a part of.