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.