Center for Teaching and Learning

February 15 Canvas Release

Posted on January 27, 2020 | Leave a comment

Canvas is updated every month with new features and fixes. The Macomb CTL posts new release highlights to our blog at emacomb.com. Please contact us at ctlsupport@macomb.edu if you have questions about Canvas releases.

February 15 Release

Please watch the New Feature Screencast for a review of the updates in this release:

Gradebook Import – Ignore Reserved Names

This change will impact instructors who import their own CSV files into the Canvas Gradebook. The Gradebook will now ignore any reserved name columns or hidden/deleted custom columns and not import them into the Canvas Gradebook. Examples of reserved column names include Student, ID, SIS User ID, SIS Login ID, Section, and other information taken directly from your institution’s SIS (Student Information System database such as Datatel, Ellucian, etc.)

This change will prevent instructors from accidentally overwriting any information in these columns – if instructors accidentally use a CSV column named “Section,” for example, it will be ignored during import, and the original SIS-supplied value kept in the Gradebook.

Many instructors do not import CSVs and therefore will notice no change.

Direct Share

COMING SOON: Canvas is planning a new content sharing feature for instructors, and we’re in the process of evaluating the feature for use at Macomb. The Direct Share feature will allow you to share module items – pages, assignments, quizzes, files – with other instructors. Click the three-dot icon to use the feature. The three dots are located on both the Modules page and on individual pages or assignments.

You may send items to any instructor at Macomb. The recipient will see a notification in the Account area of the Global Navigation menu:

Click Account > Shared Content to see details of the shared item:

The recipient can then import the content into one of their courses or delete it.

A related new feature is Copy To… , which allows you to copy a module item from one of your courses to another. (You must be an instructor in both courses.) You’ll find the Copy To feature directly below the Send To feature in the three-dot menu.

You may then choose the destination course and module where you’d like to place the copied content.

The complete production release notes for this release are available on the Canvas Community.

The next Canvas production release will be available Saturday, March 21, with release notes available Tuesday, February 18.

Images on this page are from the Canvas Guides and Release Notes, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Agreement.

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Tagged copy to, CSV, Datatel, Direct Share, Feature Options, gradebook, import, reserved columns, reserved names, sharing, SIS

January 18 Canvas Release

Posted on January 12, 2020 | Leave a comment

January 18 Release

Please watch the New Feature Screencast for a review of the updates in this release:

Student Context Card Progress Summary

This feature has been optionally available and is now standard. Context cards are small windows which give you a snapshot of the student’s progress in the course, including their current/final grade, number of missing and late assignments, and grades on the last 10 graded items.

Click on a student’s name from the Gradebook or People pages and the context card will display. Context cards are currently unavailable in Inbox, SpeedGrader, or Groups.

Post Submission Comments Without Grade

Instructors may now draft comments on manually-graded assignments without requiring a grade. Previously, instructors were required to enter a grade before they could enter a comment.

Note that the comments as well as the grades will be hidden from the students until you decide to Post them. The small red dot in the grade cell indicates a hidden grade or comment.

Personal Pronouns

COMING SOON: Students and instructors will be soon able to display their preferred pronouns, if desired. To select your personal pronoun, browse to Account (in left-side global navigation) > Settings.

If students opt to show a pronoun, it will appear across various areas in Canvas, such as the User Navigation Menu, Inbox, Discussions, Comments, and People pages.

The complete production release notes for this release are available on the Canvas Community.

The next Canvas production release will be available Saturday, February 15, with release notes available Monday, January 20.

Images on this page are from the Canvas Guides and Release Notes, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Agreement.

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Tagged comments, Direct Share, Feature Options, New Gradebook, personal pronouns, production release, student context card

December 21 Canvas Release

Posted on December 2, 2019 | Leave a comment

December 21 Release

Please watch the New Feature Screencast for a review of the updates in this release:

Global Announcement Notifications

Global Announcements allow Canvas administrators to communicate urgent institution-wide messages, which are posted at the top of every Canvas user’s Dashboard. There are five types of Global Announcement: warning, error, information, question, or calendar.

In the December release, the Notification Preferences page has been updated to include Global Announcements. The default is Notify me right away, but may be changed if desired.

Notification Preferences page with Global Announcements option

Grade Export Report – Grading Scheme Values

[Note: This change only affects Canvas admins, not instructors or students.] In the Account Settings > Reports area, the Grade Export report has been updated to include the values for the course’s grading scheme. This allows viewers to see exactly how many points much the final and current grades differ from from the desired letter grade.

Conferencing Interface Updates

These changes affect only BigBlueButton, the third-party software used in the Conferences area.

Meeting participants can now resize the webcam window in which the presenter appears. This is useful in situations where the presenter needs to be seen in great detail, such as one’s hands demonstrating words in sign language.
The current speaker is now indicated by a blue icon in the upper left corner of the meeting window. Previously, one had to scroll through the list of attendees to find the “now speaking” icon.

The complete production release notes for this release are available on the Canvas Community.

The next Canvas production release will be available Saturday, January 18, with release notes available Monday, December 23.

Images on this page are from the Canvas Guides and Release Notes, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Agreement.

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Tagged admins, announcements, BigBlueButton, Canvas production release, conferences, global announcements, gradebook, instructors, notifications, students, user experience, user interface

November 16 Canvas Release

Posted on October 31, 2019 | Leave a comment

November 16 Release

Please watch the New Feature Screencast for a review of the updates in this release:

Microsoft Immersive Reader

Microsoft is bringing its Immersive Reader to Canvas. This feature is designed to benefit students of all ages, reading levels, and visual abilities. The Immersive Reader presents large text on an uncluttered background with added white space. Students may also toggle Read Aloud, a text-to-speech feature, to support reading comprehension.

Page with immersive authoring functionality

To activate, simply click the Immersive Reader button in the top right of the Page. At this time, the Immersive Reader is only available in Canvas Pages, but not Assignments, Quizzes, Discussions, or Files.

Canvas page with immersive reader button

Rich Content Editor Enhancements

A New Rich Content Editor is now available, and the existing Rich Content Editor will be deprecated. It will be removed on June 20, 2020, at which point the New RCE will become the default. You may enable the New RCE at any point after November 16, 2019 to become familiar with it. The feature is activated under Course Settings for each individual course.

Detail of redesigned icons:

The plug icon on the far right is to link External Apps / LTIs such as Codio, Techsmith, Office 365, and Films on Demand.

Plagiarism Reports in Gradebook

This release introduces plagiarism report icons to the New Gradebook. Previously, these were only viewable in the old gradebook (which will be permanently removed January 18, 2020.)

The icons have also been redesigned for visibility by using shape to convey information:

New Gradebook old vs new plagiarism icon comparison

Exclamation point icon: Error in submitting. Resubmit to plagiarism service (at Macomb, this will be TurnItIn) through SpeedGrader.
Red half-filled circle icon: Similarity score between 20% and 60%. Moderate chance of plagiarism. Review the submission in TurnItIn.
Green circle with checkmark icon: Similarity score between 0% and 20%, meaning low chance of plagiarism.
Solid red circle icon: Similarity score higher than 60%. High chance of plagiarism. Strongly recommend reviewing submission in TurnItIn.
Clock icon: submission in process. Check back in a few minutes.

New Gradebook Grade Detail Tray shows plagiarism score

The Grade Detail Tray (overlapping pane on right) also shows the icon, similarity score, and a link to access the submission in TurnItIn.

The complete production release notes for this release are available on the Canvas Community.

The next Canvas production release will be available Saturday, December 14, with release notes available Monday, November 25.

Images on this page are from the Canvas Guides and Release Notes, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Agreement.

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Tagged abilities, accessibility, ADA, Canvas production release, Grade Detail Tray, gradebook, icons, learners, Microsoft Immersive Reader, plagiarism, Rich Content Editor, TurnItIn, visibility

October 19 Canvas Release

Posted on October 19, 2019 | Leave a comment

October 19 Release

Please watch the New Feature Screencast for a review of the updates in this release:

Menu Visibility

This month’s Canvas release features improved visibility in the navigation menus. A hidden visibility icon will indicate which links you have opted to hide from students (chosen from Settings > Navigation).

Course navigation before and after comparison

New Gradebook – Manual Grade Posting Policy Enhancements

The word MANUAL will appear in the assignment title row to indicate assignments using a Manual Grade Posting Policy. The Visibility icon (crossed-out eye) will appear ONLY when grades have been entered but NOT posted. This change is intended to simplify the user experience of the recently-implemented Manual Posting Policy.

(larger image)

These images show, from left to right:

Visibility icon indicates Manual Posting Policy is set for this assignment. Grades have been entered but not posted.
After clicking Post Grades, a red dot will appear indicating that these students’ grades have not been posted yet.
Click the Post button to make the grades visible to students. The eye icon and red dots will be cleared.

The complete production release notes for this release are available on the Canvas Community.

The next Canvas production release will be available Saturday, November 16, with release notes available Monday, October 21.

Images on this page are from the Canvas Guides and Release Notes, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Agreement.

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Tagged accessibility, contrast, hide grades, Manual Posting Policy, manually post grades, New Gradebook, visibility

September 21 Canvas Release

Posted on September 21, 2019 | Leave a comment

September 21 Release

Please see the New Feature Screencast for a review of the updates in this release:

SpeedGrader – Filter By Student Group

This change is a Feature Option intended to streamline grading in large courses. You may turn on the feature in Settings :

Course Setting for large courses to enable SpeedGrader by student group

Once this feature is activated, you will NOT be able to launch SpeedGrader from the Gradebook window until you first select a student group in the filter menu.

New Gradebook grade detail tray displays if selecting a group is required before viewing SpeedGrader

The feature is designed to improve slow performace in SpeedGrader that occurs upon hitting a threshold of 2,500 submissions.

The complete production release notes for this release are available on the Canvas Community.

The next Canvas production release will be available Saturday, October 19, with release notes available Monday, September 30.

Images on this page are from the Canvas Guides and Release Notes, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Agreement.

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Tagged Canvas Community, Feature Options, groups, lag, performance, SpeedGrader, student groups

August 17 Canvas Release

Posted on August 17, 2019 | Leave a comment

August 17 Release

Please see the New Feature Screencast for a review of the updates in this release:

Internet Explorer No Longer Supported for Canvas

Please be advised that Canvas has officially ended support of the Internet Explorer browser. In March 2018, Canvas downgraded IE to a “functionally-supported” browser and used browser notifications to warn users of the decreased level of support. In April 2019, Canvas announced that IE support would be terminated. As of August 3, if you attempt to use Canvas with IE, you will see the notification above. We recommend switching to a fully-supported browser such as Chrome, Firefox, or Safari and setting it as your default browser. For further discussion, please see the Canvas Community.

Alternatives to Treat Ungraded As Zero

As we begin the Fall semester, we’re reminding faculty NOT to use Treat Ungraded Items as Zero because once selected, it cannot be reversed. The feature also places dashes in the Gradebook for ungraded assignments, but will calculate the student’s final grade as if the student received a zero on the assignment.

To a similar goal, we recommend these alternatives:

Set a Missing Policy for the course – unsubmitted assignments will automatically be graded as zero if not submitted by the due date.
Set the Default Grade of the assignment to zero after grading all submissions. This will automatically grade all unsubmitted assignments as zero, or another score of your choice.

The complete production release notes for this release are available on the Canvas Community.

The next Canvas production release will be available Saturday, September 21, with release notes available Monday, August 26.

Images on this page are from the Canvas Guides and Release Notes, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Agreement.

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Tagged Canvas Community, default grade, deprecation, Internet Explorer, missing policy, treat ungraded as zero

July 13 Canvas Release

Posted on July 11, 2019 | Leave a comment

Canvas is updated every third Saturday with new features and fixes. The Macomb CTL posts new release highlights to our blog at emacomb.com. Please contact us at ctlsupport@macomb.edu if you have questions about Canvas releases.

July 13 Release

Please watch the New Feature Screencast for a review of the updates in this release:

New Grade Posting Policies

This release introduces significant changes to the way grades are managed and viewed. These changes are intended to replace the behavior of the popular Mute Assignment function from the previous Gradebook.

The new Grade Posting Policies are viewable from the Gradebook Settings menu (gear icon in upper right of Gradebook). The default policy is Automatic – students will see grades as soon as you post them. To begin “muting” the grades, choose “Manually Post Grades.”

When you set the grading policy, it will apply to all assignments created after that time. However, you still have the ability to change individual assignments to either grading policy by clicking the three-dot icon in the assignment heading.

The unfilled eye icon indicates that the assignment has been set to Manually Post Grades. The solid orange eye icon indicates that you’ve begun entering grades for an assignment, but they are still hidden from students (muted).

To “unmute” these grades you would post them from the assignment menu in the gradebook:

The orange dot indicates which students’ grades will be posted when you click Post. You may choose to post grades for all students – including those who have not submitted the assignment – or only for students who have submitted the assignment and received a grade. When all grades for an assignment have been posted, the eye icon will disappear.

You may always use the three-dot icon to change a posted grade back to a hidden grade and vice-versa.

Clicking on the individual student’s grade will also verify whether that student’s grade is posted or hidden. A “Hidden” icon will display in the Grade Detail Tray:

How will students experience these changes? Students will see the eye icon on their Grades page when you’ve graded a Manual assignment, and will only see the actual grade once you post grades for that assignment, as described above.

The complete production release notes for this release are available on the Canvas Community.

The next Canvas production release will be available Saturday, August 17, with release notes available Monday, July 22.

Images on this page are from the Canvas Guides and Release Notes, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Agreement.

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Tagged grade policies, hide grades, manually post grades, muting, muting assignments, New Gradebook, post grades

June 22 Canvas Release

Posted on June 20, 2019 | Leave a comment

June 22 Release

Please watch the New Feature Screencast for a review of the updates in this release:

Gradebook: Student Groups Filter

The Gradebook now allows you to apply a filter based on Student Groups. To activate the filter, click to View > Filters > Student Groups. This will add a Student Group filter menu directly above the gradebook, which will let you show students from all groups, or from individual groups. (You may also activate all four filters at once: Assignment Groups, Modules, Sections, and Student Groups.)

Click within the drop-down menu to choose the student group you want to display:

To see the full effect of this update, be sure to toggle Group under Secondary Info in the Student Name column (click three dots in Student Name heading cell):

This will list all groups the student belongs to underneath their name.

Discussions: Student Interface Update

If you have disabled the ability for students to edit or delete their discussion posts, that now reflects in the student’s view of the discussion. Clicking the Settings menu (three dots) within a post will clearly show the student that their Edit and Delete permissions have been disabled. This provides more transparent communication to the student that the instructor has disabled editing or deleting posts for this course.

Recall that you may activate or disable the Student Settings for Discussions under Discussions > Discussion Settings (gear in upper right) > Student Settings: