eleanortf Canvas Features, Canvas Updates, Start/End of Term

What’s New in Canvas? Fall 2025

The following information will introduce you to notable changes in Canvas for Fall 2025. If you haven’t used Canvas in the past year, we recommend reviewing What’s New in Canvas Spring 2025.

Assignments & Grading

Want to learn more about Assignments and Grading in Canvas? See our upcoming Canvas Workshops in September.

New Canvas Features & Updates

New Features

  • Redesigned Files Page The Files page is redesigned. A temporary button allows users to switch between the new and original interface. For a complete list of how the look and feel of the Files page has changed, please see the release notes.
  • Dyslexia Friendly Font When the Use Dyslexia Friendly Font feature option is enabled in User Settings, the Canvas interface and the Rich Content Editor display text using the OpenDyslexic font by default. If the feature is disabled, both OpenDyslexic and OpenDyslexic Mono are available as font options within the Rich Content Editor. For details, see the release notes.
  • Discussions Default View Settings When creating or editing a discussion, instructors can configure the default view settings, including thread collapse/expansion and sorting options for students, with the ability to lock these preferences if needed.

Feature Updates

  • Media Player with Improved Accessibility and Usability The media player playback experience has been improved with enhanced accessibility, adaptive streaming, and privacy features. For details, please see the release notes.

    Please note – these are changes to the built-in media player in Canvas and do not effect Panopto/Class Recordings.

New Quizzes Updates

  • Text Block In New Quizzes, instructors are able to provide students additional context with standalone text or prompts that are not tied to questions on a New Quiz. For more details, please see the release notes.
  • Question Bank Migration on Course Copy Instructors can migrate Classic Quiz question banks to New Quiz item banks by using the Convert content to New Quizzes checkbox, previously labeled Import existing quizzes on the Course Copy and Import Course Content pages.

    New Quizzes is currently an opt-in feature. Contact canvas@pobox.upenn.edu if you’re interested in enabling it.

Third Party Tools

Pilots

  • Wooclap A tool for student engagement through in-class polling and checks for understanding. Wooclap has similar functionality to Poll Everywhere. Poll Everywhere remains available for those not participating in the pilot.

    If you’re interested in joining the pilot, contact your LSP.

Updates

Questions?

For additional help and support, please email canvas@pobox.upenn.edu.

eleanortf Canvas Features, Canvas Updates

Discussion Checkpoints Feature Disabled

We have disabled the recently released Discussion Checkpoints feature option in both Penn Canvas and Open Canvas. We made this choice after the vendor was alerted by by faculty and support staff to serious concerns regarding the new Discussions SpeedGrader experience and pulled the feature for institutions that had not already enabled it. Based on the data we were able to access through the Canvas API, we do not believe this feature was in active use by any Spring 2025 courses.

Issues with the new Discussions SpeedGrader experience that weren’t clear in testing before release include:

  • Accessibility of the tool for those with disabilities
  • Loss of discussion context
  • Slow loading time for large discussions

Because the new SpeedGrader experience affects all graded Discussions if Discussion Checkpoints is enabled, we had to disable the feature. We will re-evaluate in the future if improvements are made. In the meantime, the previous Discussions SpeedGrader experience is still available to faculty, along with the third-party tool Ed Discussion.

Please contact canvas@pobox.upenn.edu with any questions.