Vicky Maloy Senior Instructional  Technologist Office of Teaching, Learning & Technology Keeping up with ICON

Instructure is committed to consistently improving the Canvas user experience. Their cloud-based platform allows them to maintain an agile production cycle of three weeks, and provide users with bug fixes, enhancements, and new features on a regular basis. Here is a summary of some of the changes you may have noticed since the last ICONext day in 2017 3 WEEK CHANGE CYCLE

1. UDOIT UDoIT (2017, November) The Universal Design Online Content Inspection Tool (UDoIT), helps instructors become more aware of course site accessibility and provides the ability to fix potential accessibility issues to instructors in their course. This program was developed by the University of Central Florida, and is available in the Navigation tab of your course site settings.

2. Rich Content Editor Accessibility Checker (2017-10-28) The Rich Content Editor Accessibility Checker assists instructors and course designers to maintain accessibility requirements in Canvas content. This tool only verifies content created within the Rich Content Editor. An institution may also use other accessibility tools to verify additional content in Canvas. The Accessibility Checker is located in the Rich Content Editor menu bar. Depending on the size of the browser window, users may have to scroll the menu bar horizontally to view the Accessibility Checker icon.   The Accessibility Checker verifies attributes within the editor and notifies the content creator of common accessibility errors. The Accessibility Checker provides a user-friendly explanation about any errors and provides the fields or menus needed to fix the error. The explanation also provides a link to additional resources to educate content creators about the accessibility guideline. The content creator can easily correct the error and apply the fix using the editor.

3. Announcements Locked by Default Section Specific (2018-03-10) Announcements are locked by default and no longer display a lock icon.  Announcements that allow comments include a Reply link under the announcement. Users can view and reply to the announcement by clicking the announcement title or the Reply link. Note: Comments cannot be disabled for announcements within groups. Section-Specific Announcements When creating an announcement, instructors can create section-specific announcements in their courses. When creating an announcement, instructors can select to send the announcement to all sections, one section, or multiple sections.

4. Discussions Section Specific Discussions (2018-06-23) Discussion Duplication (2018-04-09) Non-graded discussions can be posted for a specific section or all sections. The number of sections is visible to all users who are able to view the discussion. Only non-graded discussions display section visibility in the Discussions page. For graded discussions, section-specific discussions can be used by differentiating an assignment in the Assign To field. Discussion Duplication (2018-04-09) Discussions can be duplicated within both a course and group context. However, in groups, students can only duplicate discussions that they’ve created; they cannot duplicate a discussion by another student in the same group. Instructors can duplicate any student discussion.

5. Rubrics Criterion Duplication (2017-11-18) Non-scoring Rubrics  (2018-07-14) Criteria can be duplicated within a rubric. This feature allows instructors and course designers to easily copy and modify existing criteria. The duplication option is displayed as part of the link to add a new criterion. When a criterion is copied, the criterion is duplicated exactly as the original criterion, including the criterion title, ratings, and point value, and placed at the bottom of the rubric. Outcomes added to a rubric can also be duplicated in the rubric.  Non-scoring Rubrics (2017-07-14) Rubrics can be created without point values to create a non-scoring rubric. This feature promotes learning engagement by helping students focus on assignment feedback instead of point values. Additionally, improvements have been made to the Learning Mastery Gradebook and Student Learning Mastery Gradebook interfaces for a simplified user experience.

6. Languages Italian Welsh Greek Hungarian Ukrainian AND Right-to-Left Language Support

7. Student Dashboard: To Do List (2018-08-04) Student To Do List (2018-08-04) The Dashboard includes an option to view all course tasks in a list format. This view is currently only available to students. In addition to displaying automatically populated graded To Do items, the List view allows instructors to add non-graded items to the To Do list and students to add their own items to the To Do items.   This change helps students manage all tasks across all their courses in a user-friendly format that also allows for user customization. Pages and Non-Graded Discussions Instructors can set pages and non-graded discussions to display in the Dashboard List view. When creating a page or non-graded discussion, instructors can select an option to add the item to the student’s Dashboard List view. This option allows instructors to help students remember to read a course page or participate in a non-graded discussion by a specific date. Student To Dos Students can manually create To Do items for their To Do list in the List View Menu. To Dos include a specific icon to differentiate from other To Do list items. To Do items default as general items that are not associated with a course. However, students can choose to associate the note with a specific course.

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