Canvas Production Release: December 21, 2019

Canvas operates on a monthly 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.

December 21, 2019 Production Release Highlights

Global Announcement Notification Option: Global Announcements include a checkbox to distribute a notification to subscribed users. In the Notifications page, the Alerts section includes a Global Announcements option. By default, the notification preference is set to Immediately via email. Other notification channels default to off. As part of creating a global announcement, an admin can enable a checkbox to send the global announcement via notification. All users will receive the global announcement via email, unless a user has disabled the notification for global announcements.
BigBlueButton Interface Webcam Window Resizing: The BigBlueButton interface allows participants to resize the webcam window during a conference. When a participant is viewing another user through a webcam window, the participant is able to resize the window larger than the default view. This change benefits conferences where the presenter needs to be seen more prominently on screen, such as for sign language classes. To see how this feature can be used, please see the Resize webcams in BigBlueButton video.
BigBlueButton Interface User Talking Indicator: The BigBlueButton interface displays the user who is talking in the left corner of the meeting window. This change allows moderators to better see who is talking in large BigBlueButton conferences.

Other Upcoming Changes: On Monday January 6^th, we will be enabling New Gradebook. Please see our documentation for more information about this change.