Instructure (the makers of CANVAS) schedules monthly improvements and bug fixes to it’s product. The following Feature Upgrades are scheduled for Saturday 3/9/2013. Here is what you can expect to change in CANVAS:
Current Feature Upgrades 3/9/2013 : Featuring Varied Due Dates
Previous Feature Upgrades 2/16/2013 : Featuring Closed Captioning
Some features/fixes in this release:
Within Assignments, Discussions, and Quizzes, instructors can assign different availability dates and due dates for each section of their course. This feature is designed to help instructors when they have sections of a course that meet on different days of the week or in different formats (online vs. face-to-face).
Instructors can disable comments on Announcements for an entire course in Course Settings. This setting can be enabled at any time during the course and will apply to all future Announcements as well as those previously posted. Instructors who do not want to use this course-level setting can still close comments for individual Announcements.
Account administrators can disable student messaging to the entire class. However, the setting does not prevent students from communicating with each other in course groups. Administrators can set this permission at the account or sub-account level.
Edit/Delete Discussion Posts
Instructors can restrict students from editing or deleting their discussion posts. This permission can be set in the Discussion settings or in the Course Settings under “more options”.
Students will only be able to view the history of a course page if they have permission to edit the page. Otherwise the page history link will no longer appear. Instructors or administrators can enable or disable page editing in Course Settings.
Kaltura Videos
Kaltura videos now play correctly, including new and previously embedded videos.
Notification URLs
URLs used in Notifications will link users to the specific Announcement or Discussion.
Muted Assignment Notifications
Canvas now respects muted settings within a course, and students will no longer see notifications for muted assignments in their course stream.
Gradebook CSV File Uploads
When users upload a CSV file in the Gradebook, Canvas will remember the Gradebook version where the file was downloaded. Previously after upload, the user would always be redirected to Gradebook 1. Now if the CSV is uploaded from Gradebook 2, the results will be shown in Gradebook 2.
Find a Course Autocomplete
Autocomplete results within the “Find a Course” field are now clickable and will link to the course.
Course Statistics
Instructors can no longer access institution-level user pages through Course Statistics, locking down privacy concerns.
Grade Export Report
The Grade Export Report now displays students only. Previously the report pulled all user roles.
Accessibility Updates
Accessibility updates have been made to the following:
Other Canvas Updates
Quizzes, Discussions, and Assignments Interface Updates
The Quizzes, Discussions, and Assignment interfaces have changed slightly. Students and instructors will see newly designed interface updates for Assignments and Quizzes.
Cross-Institution Conversations
Conversations now work on more than one institution, resulting in a more seamless workflow for applicable users.
Added Languages
Canvas now supports Japanese and Portuguese.
Improved Loading Times
Gradebook download times have decreased, and the dashboard sidebar now loads asynchronously to improve performance.
IF …something is not working as it should …what worked fine last week is different this week …the enrollments in my course are not correct
THEN the Technology Help Desk provided by Information Resources can help you get things fixed or escalated to the right people. http://depts.bellevuecollege.edu/helpdesk/ Contact us at (425)564-4357
IF …you are new to CANVAS …need help with a feature or tool …want to migrate data or upload content
THEN our CANVAS training options provided by Information Resources are your best bet. http://depts.bellevuecollege.edu/helpdesk/training/
IF …you have an idea to improve CANVAS …wish CANVAS was able to do this …a feature would be better if it could do this
THEN you should submit a Feature Request via the Instructure CANVAS Community
