What’s New in Canvas Fall 2023?

The following information will introduce you to notable changes in Canvas for Fall 2023. If you haven’t used Canvas in the past year, we recommend reviewing What’s New in Canvas Spring 2022.

Assignments & Grading

SpeedGrader: Additional Quick Links SpeedGrader quick links are added to Options menus for Assignments, Graded Discussions, Modules, Classic Quizzes and New Quizzes. For more details, please see the release notes.
Grading Scheme Redesign In Account Settings, Grading Periods and Schemes display in an updated tab view for admins. Additionally, Grading Schemes is updated to Schemes. In Course Settings, instructors can view and edit individual grading schemes in a modal. For more details, please see the release notes.
Gradebook: Enhanced Gradebook Filter Feature Enforcement The Enhanced Gradebook feature option is implemented for all institutions. Previously, this functionality was managed by the Enhanced Gradebook Filter feature option. This updates the Gradebook view and allows the creation of custom filter presets for institutions that were not early adopters of the Enhanced Gradebook filter. For more details, please see the release notes.

Updates to New Quizzes

Rich Content Editor in New Quizzes, Supports Third-Party Appss The Rich Content Editor (RCE) is available in New Quizzes and supports adding content using third-party apps.
Zero-Point New Quiz in Gradebook Checkbox Instructors can choose to not display a column in the gradebook or student page when creating a zero-point practice New Quiz. For more details, please see the release notes.
New Quizzes: Bulk Migration This change allows instructors to migrate multiple classic quizzes with all their content into the New Quizzes engine. This is currently an opt-in feature. Contact canvas@pobox.upenn.edu if you’re interested in enabling it.

New Tools & Features

Bulk Publish and Unpublish Module Items In Modules, instructors can bulk publish all modules or individual modules. Instructors have the option to publish all modules and items, publish all modules only, or unpublish all modules and items. Additionally, the publish icon on individual modules is updated to include a Module status menu. For more details, please see the release notes.
Rich Content Editor: Edit Course Link Sidebar Update When editing a course link, the sidebar is updated to allow users to view the name of the current link and choose a replacement from all available course links.

Course Development, Design, & Management

New Course Reserves Tool, Leganto Leganto is a new course reserves tool that offers new features and tools to more easily add resources and organize materials from Penn Libraries within their Canvas sites. All content previously added to Ares, the old tool, is available to copy over from in Leganto.
Course Shopping Period Penn has developed a virtual shopping period in Canvas so that students can “visit” different courses as they finalize their course selections. This feature will be available starting on the first day of classes through the last day to add a class during the Fall and Spring semesters. In Fall 2023 Course Shopping will run from Tuesday August 29th through Tuesday September 12th.
Due to ongoing issues we have disabled the Poll Everywhere Canvas integration. Poll Everywhere is still available as a stand-alone tool outside of Canvas. If you need to sync Poll Everywhere results to Canvas, please contact canvas@pobox.upenn.edu for further assistance.
Want to learn more about Assignments and Grading in Canvas? See our upcoming Canvas Workshops in September.