Effective the week of January 2, 2023, a few tools integrated into Canvas will be retired and will no longer be available for use in your courses. Several factors influence a tool’s retirement: the tool’s age and maintenance needs, cost and contract changes, and overall usage at UD. The following tools will be retired:
- Post’Em: Post’Em is a legacy tool from Sakai and provided an alternative to the Sakai gradebook. If you are a Post’Em user and need to provide individualized feedback to students, consider creating a Canvas assignment and adding a score or comment. A Canvas assignment will display the information to only the student assigned. The Canvas gradebook has the ability to provide different types of scores – points, letter grades, etc., as an alternative to Post’Em. Files generated or uploaded to the Canvas Files though the Post’Em tool will not be removed from existing courses.
- Piazza: Piazza is a stand-alone tool that was also integrated to be accessible from Canvas. It was designed to allow instructors to efficiently manage class Q&A and provide a venue for asynchronous class discussion. If you have been using Piazza in your course, please consider using the Canvas Discussions tool. Canvas Discussions provides both ungraded and graded discussions, a space for group discussions, the ability to use rubrics and peer feedback, as well as other customizations.
- jQueryUI Widgets in the Rich Content Editor: The jQueryUI Widgets provided users the ability to easily add layout elements like tabs and accordions to content created with the Canvas Rich Content Editor (RCE). The tool was integrated at a time when easily adding HTML design elements were limited without advanced HTML knowledge. This legacy tool is no longer supported, and users can customize content much more creatively using the integrated DesignPlus Tools for Canvas.
Another tool, Purchase Course Materials, will be removed temporarily. Purchase Course Materials allows you to provide your students a direct access course navigation menu link to the UD Bookstore. Barnes & Noble, the tool developer, is developing a more robust tool integration, but will not support the existing tool during that process. If you would like to provide your students a link to the UD Bookstore in your course, please use this Purchase Course Materials link (https://udel.bncollege.com/course-material/course-finder?utm_campaign=lms_link&utm_source=client_push&utm_medium=LMS). You can provide the link in your content, such as your course home page or your Syllabus. At this time the developer has not provided a delivery date for the new tool, but we will update you as soon as we know more information.
All changes will be complete starting January 9, 2023. If you need assistance exploring current alternatives for these tools, please contact the instructional designer assigned to your department. If you have any questions about the changes, please e-mail canvas-info@udel.edu.
