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.
10/28/17 Production Release Highlights:
- Accessibility Checker: The Rich Content Editor Accessibility Checker assists instructors and course designers to maintain accessibility requirements in Canvas content. The Accessibility Checker is located in the Rich Content Editor menu bar. Depending on the size of the browser window, users may have to scroll the menu bar horizontally to view the “Accessibility Checker” icon.The Accessibility Checker verifies attributes within the editor and notifies the content creator of common accessibility errors. The Accessibility Checker provides a user-friendly explanation about any errors and provides the fields or menus needed to fix the error. The explanation also provides a link to additional resources to educate content creators about the accessibility guideline. The content creator can easily correct the error and apply the fix to the editor. For a list of the accessibility rules the tool checks, please see the full release notes.
- Move-To Menu Sidebars in Assignments and Discussions: The “Move-To” Menu within the “Assignments” and “Discussions” pages has been changed to a sidebar and displays a nested structure of move options. This change helps improve consistency with other “Move-To Menus” in Canvas. The selected menu change is applied immediately.
- Discussion Duplication: Discussions can be duplicated in the “Discussions” page or the “Assignments” page. The duplication option is located in the “Settings” menu for every available discussion. When a discussion is copied, the word “Copy” is added to the end of the discussion name. Duplicating a discussion defaults the copied discussion to an unpublished status. All items in the discussion are duplicated, including the name, description, and options. The person who copied the discussion is shown as the author of the discussion and is immediately subscribed to the discussion, and the date the discussion was copied displays as the last posted date. Please see the full release notes for duplication exceptions in graded discussions.
- DocViewer Comment Expand and Collapse Link: When an annotated comment includes multiple content lines, the content box displays an ellipses notifying the user of additional content. This change helps minimize comments in a document and improve the number of comments that can be displayed within a page. Users can click the ellipses to expand the comment. If a comment includes multiple replies, all replies are also expanded.
- Annotation Delete Icon Visibility: When a user creates an annotation, the “Delete” icon only displays as part of the initial placement. Once a user clicks away from the annotation, the “Delete” icon no longer displays in the page. The “Delete” icon only displays again if the user directly clicks the annotation. This change hides the “Delete” icon so it does not obscure annotation content.
- Gradebook History Filters: The “Gradebook History” page has been redesigned for improved performance and includes display filters for a specific student, grader, assignment, and start and end date. Additionally, this feature is redesigned based on existing data in Canvas, so displayed content is still retroactive. This change also removes the previous limit of 2,000 grade changes and allows instructors to view all grade changes in the course. For individual filters, results are generated dynamically. Users will need to know the name of the student, grader, and/or assignment to type in the search filter. Matching results can be selected from the results list, and multiple filters can be used at the same time. However, filters are not applied without clicking the Filter button.
- Rubric Criterion Icon Visibility: In the “Create Rubric” or “Edit Rubric” view, criteria visibly display all “Add,” “Edit,” and “Delete” icons. Additionally, the “Delete” criterion column has been removed from the rubric table; the delete icon for each criterion is located above the criterion description.
- Ratings Rubric Descriptions: When a user splits a rating, the rubric displays an “Edit Rating” window that includes the rating score, rating title, and rating description. Rating descriptions are not required, though any content in the description also displays as part of the rating in the rubric. Rating titles and descriptions are never truncated, though content should generally be short and concise. Rubric description ratings display in all areas where rubrics can be viewed including the course and account rubrics pages, associated assignments, and the student “Grades” page. In SpeedGrader, descriptions are included when a rubric is used for grading, but they are not included in the rubric summary after grading is complete.
For a complete production release update, please see:
Canvas Production Release Notes: October 28, 2017
2017-10-28 New Feature Screencast from Canvas LMS on Vimeo.
View the script for this video.
Last Updated: 14 Dec 2018