News and Announcements

Canvas - Features Enabled 05/24/2020

Posted: 2020-05-24 15:34:58   Expiration: 2020-05-31 15:34:58

Disclaimer: This news item was originally posted on 2020-05-24 15:34:58. Its content may no longer be timely or accurate.

The following Canvas features have been enabled in the University of Wisconsin System's Instructional, Continuing Education, and Training & Development instances.

New features in Canvas available after 05/24/2020:
  • Course Settings: Link Validator Celebration. The Confetti for Valid Links feature option displays confetti for instructors who run the link validator on a course and no issues are found. Instructors can disable celebrations for their own account in User Settings.
  • Confetti for On-Time Submissions. Canvas generates a virtual celebration when students submit assignments on time. Celebrations take place in Canvas for on-time submissions, which include both an initial submission and any resubmissions for any file type before an assignment due date. Students can disable celebrations for their own account in User Settings.
  • Help for Unpublished Courses (also referred to as Instructor Publishing Improvements) The Dashboard, Courses menu, and All Courses page display both published and unpublished courses. This change helps instructors see what courses are unpublished in various Canvas locations. The Dashboard displays two sections: published courses and unpublished courses. Unpublished courses display at the bottom of the Dashboard.  Note: The Dashboard only displays favorited courses for the current term or course dates.
  • New User Tutorial New Instructor Tutorials display for instructors in newly created courses. Tutorial pages display in Outcomes, Rubrics, and New Analytics pages to provide additional resources and information about these features.
  • Product Tour (Admin) Canvas provides a welcome tour for admins that guides them through transitioning their institution for online learning. This change displays a welcome tour to orient admins to Canvas and guide them toward Canvas best practices and resources. Each tour area includes links to specific how-to lessons about accomplishing each task.
  • Product Tour (Instructor) This change displays a welcome tour to orient instructors and guide them toward Canvas best practices and resources in the Canvas Community. After logging in to Canvas, instructors view a short welcome message that gives them a quick tour through setting up notifications, locating their courses and setting them up online, and accessing Canvas resources and how-to guides. The setting up a Canvas course section directs instructors to tutorial videos showing them how to set up a course in less than 30 minutes.
  • Product Tour (Student) Canvas provides a welcome tour for students that guides them through getting started with a Canvas course. This change displays a welcome tour to orient students through their courses in Canvas.After logging in to Canvas, students view a short welcome message that gives them a quick tour through finding their courses, contacting their instructors, downloading the Canvas Mobile App, and getting help with Canvas.
  • Assignment Allowed Attempts (previously set to allow) This feature allows instructors to limit submission attempts for students. By default, assignments can be submitted an unlimited number of times. However, instructors can choose to limit the number of attempts a student can make for an assignment by using the Attempts menu.
  • Rich Content Editor Auto Save (previously set to allow) In pages with one Rich Content Editor, the editor autosaves any content that hasn’t yet been submitted for up to one hour. This feature helps users retain new or edited content that may otherwise be lost from inadvertent browser reloads, loss of internet connection, or navigating to another window. When a user enters content in a Rich Content Editor window, the editor automatically saves the content for up to one hour. If the user navigates away from the page or another situation occurs where the user revisits the page within one hour, Canvas will notify the user if any saved content is different from the existing content. The user can preview the autosaved content and select the Yes button to load the autosaved content. Selecting the No button will discard the autosaved content.
Instructure plans to make each of these features mandatory for all accounts in July 2020. We've chosen to enable them a bit early, at the time with the fewest active courses. This should minimize disruption for as many UWS students, instructors, and staff as possible.

For more information, see Instructure's Release Notes page and the UWS's Canvas - Release Notes Meetings. 

-- UWSA DLE: Thomas Arendalkowski