Canvas operates on a three-week release cycle through which features are added or updated. Courseware Support posts highlights from Canvas’s production release notes, a link to these notes, and other relevant content to the Canvas at Penn blog a few days before the production release, which usually occurs on Saturdays. Please contact Courseware Support at canvas@pobox.upenn.edu if you have any questions about an upcoming production release.
9/19/15 Production Release Highlights:
Calendar Recurring Events: When creating a new calendar event for a course, instructors can choose to create multiple copies of the event every day, week, or month. Once created, recurring events are not linked together and are independent events. Therefore, if users need to modify an event, each event has to be modified individually. Recurring Calendar Events is a course-level feature option and must be enabled at the account level before it can be used for individual courses. This feature will be enabled for the University of Pennsylvania after the 9/19/15 release.
Conferences Polling: Presenters can create polls for participants to use during a conference. Polls can be created ahead of time, such as during a presentation, or created as part of an informal discussion. Presenters can create a poll at the bottom of the presentation window. Polls can be Yes/No, True/False, or letter responses up to six answer choices (A through F). Presenters can also create a custom poll where they can specify their answer choices. Once a poll is started, presenters can see the participant responses as they are made in real time. Presenters can also see if one or more participants in the conference have not responded. However, polls are always anonymous and voting is not required
Conclude Groups at Course Conclusion: When a course concludes in Canvas, groups in the course also conclude. Concluded groups do not appear in the Courses & Groups menu. Users can still access their previous and current groups in the Groups page.
Muted Assignments: When an instructor mutes an assignment, scores are muted from the student’s Total score, but not the instructor’s Gradebook. When an instructor mutes an assignment in the Gradebook, the Total column will display a warning indicating that the total score is different than shown to students
For a complete production release update, please see:
Canvas Production Release Notes: September 19, 2015
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Last Updated: 16 Sep 2015