Google Classroom issues with missing To Do List widget & assignments title changing to "No topic" escalated for investigation

Released in August of 2014, Google Classroom is a free learning platform that enables students and teachers to make assignments easier. The app currently has more than 150 million users worldwide.

In order to ease file sharing between teachers and students, Google Drive integrates Google Docs, Google Sheets, Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Slides. Moreover, like Meet, users can either start a class via their school domains or join privately.

It is quite rare for Google Classroom users to encounter bugs and issues on the platform. Nonetheless, some issues do surface from time to time such as the recent video playback issue where Google Drive videos were not playing.

With that being said, Google Classroom users say that they are unable to see the To do list widget on the mobile app. While it is visible to some, others are not so lucky and say it is not appearing on their account.

A few years ago, Google had removed the To do list feature from the platform, which had angered many who had multiple classes to attend in a day. Back then, many signed a petition on Change.org which resulted in Google ultimately bringing back the feature to Classroom.

The “to do list widget” is completely gone. I uninstalled the mobile app from my son’s phone, then I did a fresh install. The “to do list widget ” still doesn’t appear. Here is another interesting aspect to this. When I access both accounts using a different cell phone, nothing changes. So, it appears to be account specific related…not related to a specific cell phone. Thanks again Mark for the questions.
(Source)

Coming back to the Google Classroom mobile app To do list widget, a Platinum Product Expert on the Google Community Forum said that they have reported the issue to the Classroom team. However, they did not share any ETA on when it will be fixed.

Ghislain, Thank you for posting answers to various questions here in the help forum. In this case, this is not a new feature. The problem has been reported to the Classroom team. In the future, please do not post answers that are just a repeat of a previous answer or that you have not ensured are correct.
Mark Loundy
(Source)

While the missing to do list widget is not something that hinders productivity, the bug where Assignments automatically change to “No topic” is haunting both students and teachers.

Users say when they create an assignment and give it a topic, the assignment loses the topic and changes back to “No topic” upon copying to another class or trying to edit it.

This keeps happening to me, but not always. Today (11/9/21), it happened twice. It happened one or two times yesterday (11/8/21). NOTE: when it happened today (the 2nd time), it happened after I uploaded a new resource (a zip file). Not sure if that helps or not. It’s frustrating because I organize my content by week, so it’s difficult to remember which topic.
(Source)

This has been happening at our school as well. It started approximately three weeks ago, and it appears to occur randomly. Most of our teachers are not tech savvy, so they get stuck when they can’t find the assignment listed under the appropriate topic, and delay their class when they come to me for assistance. If it helps, I generate drafts of assignments via a script I wrote, so teachers simply have to go into a draft and assign it.
(Source)

Thankfully, a Silver Product Expert on the Community forum said that the issue has been escalated to Google. If and when the Google Classroom team releases a fix for the missing to do list widget and the assignment bug, we will update this space to reflect the same.

Note: We have more such stories in our dedicated Google Section so be sure to follow them as well.

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