Canvas Production Release: October 6, 2018

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 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.

10/6/18 Production Release Highlights

Anonymous Instructor Annotations Feature Option: In Assignments, the Anonymous Instructor Annotations option is enabled by a course-level feature option. The Anonymous Instructor Annotations option only affects DocViewer in the SpeedGrader submission window. When Anonymous Instructor Annotations is enabled, DocViewer comments do not display an instructor’s name.
List View Dashboard Dismissed Alerts: In the List View Dashboard, students can view the Alerts Menu and view new opportunities and dismissed opportunities. New opportunities can be dismissed at any time. Dismissed opportunities are only removed if they are fulfilled according to the label in the opportunity, such as submitting an assignment.
List View Dashboard Peer Review Items: In the List View Dashboard, students can view and complete peer review assignments. Peer review assignments indicate the peer review that must be made by the student and display the peer review icon. Peer reviews can either be due on the same day as the initial assignment, or it can be due after the due date.
Section-Specific Discussions Workflow Update: This change clarifies the workflow functionality of adding section-specific discussions. By default, the Discussion Details page includes all sections for the discussion. If all sections are selected, the discussion can be created as a graded discussion. The sections menu is removed, and individual sections and due dates can be added to the graded discussion. However, if the discussion is changed to include one or more specific sections, the Graded checkbox is grayed out and the discussion is not available for grading.
DocViewer Document Rotation: This feature allow instructors and students to manually rotate images and documents in DocViewer to allow easier viewing of files that were uploaded with a different image orientation.
Profile Initials in Announcements, Account-Level People, and User Navigation: For users who do not have a profile picture, Canvas will display the initials of their name as their profile picture in these locations. Previously Canvas displayed a gray profile outline for any user who did not add a profile picture.
Mark Text Element in Rich Content Editor: Users using the HTML Editor can include the mark text element (<mark>), which assists with accessibility.
Public Course Anonymous Submission Quiz Statistics: Statistics and quiz results are supported for users who complete practice quizzes and ungraded surveys in public courses.