A Canvas production update will occur on Saturday, July 20, 2024. Check out the full release notes. Production updates occur on third Saturday of each month, and the next planned update is Saturday, August 17, 2024.
Canvas Discussions/Announcements Redesign will be enforced by Canvas in all courses during this production update. The course feature option to enable/disable the redesign will be removed. For additional information, please see the Canvas@UD blog post, Canvas Discussions Redesign Enforced Starting 2024 Summer, the Canvas instructor guides for Discussions Redesign or Announcements Redesign, or the Canvas release video, Enforcement of Discussions/Announcement Redesign.
Updates in the current release include:
New Assign To Capability for Modules, Pages, and Discussions
Instructors can now assign modules, pages, and ungraded discussions to students and sections in order to streamline instructor workflow and improve the ability to differentiate instruction. For Modules, instructors can assign students to an entire module and individual module items from the Modules page. Additionally, the Add Module and Edit Module Settings pages are redesigned as trays.
This same assignment capability has been added to ungraded discussions and pages. The Assign To box presently found at the bottom of the assignments, quizzes, or discussions pages when editing has also been redesigned as a tray so that the assignment process remains consistent across tools. You will now see a “Manage Assign To” link that will open the Assign To box in a tray when clicked.
The options displayed in the tray depend on the tool. For assignments, quizzes, and discussions, you will see the same due and availability dates. For pages and ungraded discussions, only availability dates will be displayed. Use the “add to student to-do” option to place the item on the students’ to-do list and calendar. For modules, no dates are displayed. Instead use the “lock until” option to restrict visibility to a date. Access to the “Assign To” capability has also been added to content items’ option menu (the three vertical dots) in a tool list and as a button to the toolset when viewing (near the edit button) to easily review or edit dates.
New For more information, review the Canvas community blog posts, Releasing Modules to Students and Sections and The latest on releasing modules to students and sections or review the release video:
Announcements Notifications for Changed Content
Instructors can notify students when an announcement has been updated when editing an existing announcement. Please note, this option is not available when editing an announcement with a delayed posting date.
The July 3 Canvas deploy also replaced the Announcement Delay Posting option with availability dates. Please note, setting an availability end date will prevent the students from viewing the announcement after the date.
Interface Updates (July 17 deploy)
Interface changes made in this deploy:
- In SpeedGrader, after drafting a comment and moving on to another student, a Draft pill displays indicating that the comment has not been submitted. This change replaces the asterisk that was used previously to indicate a draft comment and enhances the user experience by clearly indicating when a comment has not yet been submitted.
- The Publish/Unpublish buttons on the course home page and Settings page have been replaced with a drop-down menu.
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.
