Canvas Production Release: October 31, 2015

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.

10/31/15 Production Release Highlights:

User Default Email Edits: The default email field for a Canvas user can be edited by a Canvas admin. This change allows admin to manage email addresses that may affect the account setup process for new users.

Cancel Button for Announcements & Discussions: When instructors create a new announcement or discussion, the “Announcements” and “Discussions” pages include a Cancel button. This change helps enable consistent behavior when creating content across Canvas.

Student Submission Files: Students cannot delete user files if they are associated with a submission in a course. This change allows instructors to always download assignment submissions in SpeedGrader.

Requirements and Sequential Order Placement in Modules: The “Module” requirements field displays the sequential order check-box below the All Requirements radio button. Instructors can only require students to complete module requirements in sequential order if students complete all the requirements in the module. The “One Requirement” option is not supported.

Quiz Statistics and Section Views: When instructors view quiz statistics for a course, they can choose to view quiz statistics by section.

Daylight Savings and Recurring Calendar Events: The “Recurring Calendar Event” feature creates events according to the user’s time zone.

Numerical Answer with Precision: In “Quizzes,” the “Numerical Answer” question type includes an “Answer with Precision” quiz option. “Answer with Precision” allows an admin to set an answer that is rounded to a precision of up to 16 in standard or exponential format (e.g. 1e+26). Question answer-fields accept numerical inputs with or without an “e” exponent and are formatted according to the configured precision. Any numerical entries past 16 are truncated for grading and comparison. By default, the precision answer field is set to 10. If any of the potential answers to a numerical question is a precision answer, then the student answer fields will accept precision answers. If none of the possible answers are precision answers, then the student answer fields will continue to round to four decimal places.