A Canvas production update will occur on Saturday, October 16, 2021. Check out the full release notes.  Production updates occur on third Saturday of each month, and the next planned update is Saturday, November 20, 2021. Updates in the current release include:

Submission Status Labels in SpeedGrader
Assignment submission status label/tags previously only available for editing in a student’s grade detail tray in Grades are now available to edit directly while using SpeedGrader.  The SpeedGrader right sidebar now includes an Edit Status icon to manually add or remove submission status labels in the same way as in Grades.

  • If a late policy is enabled, setting the status to late displays the late label. Additionally, a text field allows the grader to enter a value for the days/hours late.
  • Setting the status to excused displays the Excused status, and the grade field displays as EX and is grayed out.
  • Setting the status to None removes any labels that were previously displayed for the assignment.

The changes made in SpeedGrader will be reflected in Grades. The Edit Status icon is not displayed for previously submitted submissions (only the most recent submission is supported) or for assignments that require moderated grading.

Gradebook Assignment Search
Grades now includes an Assignment search field in addition to the current Student search field.

Using the Assignment search field displays any search results that match an assignment in the course.

RCE Accessibility Checker Indicator
The Rich Content Editor now visually indicates when accessibility concerns are detected in the Accessibility Checker.  This indicator helps users know about these issues without having to open the Accessibility Checker and provides content creators the opportunity to ensure content is accessible to all Canvas users.

For more information, please see the Canvas guide, How do I use the Accessibility Checker in the Rich Content Editor as an instructor?

Course Notification Customization Available from Account
Individual course notification preferences can now be customized on a user’s account Notifications page so that they can be adjusted without having to access the the course-level Notifications page for each course. (Course-level notifications were enabled in April, 2020.  For more information, please see the Canvas guides, How do I manage notifications for a single course as an instructor? and How do I manage notifications for a single course as a student?)

The user’s Notifications page displays all notification options for a user’s entire account. If a user has any active course enrollments, the menu displays the name of each course son navigate between their courses and set specific notification options for each course, if preferred.

The “View Course Notifications” link will remain available on the right sidebar of each course home page.

Sticky Navigation Menus
Course and user navigation menus remain sticky and are always visible on their respective pages.  Prior to the change, short Canvas webpages made accessing lower navigation menu items difficult, and long Canvas webpages required scrolling up to make the navigation menu items visible again.  Now, the navigation menus will remain on all pages and can be scrolled if needed to view all menu links.

New Quizzes – Modules Build Link (September 29 Deploy)
If a New Quizzes quiz is included in a module, its options menu includes a link to the quiz Build page to allow instructors to bypass the assignment details page and quickly access the quiz Build page.

 

For more information, browse the Canvas Release Notes to find updated features or bug fixes that apply to you based on your Canvas usage.  If you have any questions about the changes or about how to use Canvas effectively, IT-Academic Technology Services staff is always available at the IT-ATS Welcome Bar or you can send your questions to canvas-info@udel.edu.