Canvas Release Notes

One thing I really have enjoyed about Canvas versus our previous LMS experiences is that they have an active sub culture in the Canvas Communities. I am able to connect with thousands of other users and ask questions, join live discussion groups and so much more. If you have not explored the Canvas Communities, I highly encourage you to hit the question mark icon next time you are on Canvas and click on the Ask the Community link.

Another awesome feature within Canvas is that every 3 weeks they release new features that they have been developing. Often these notes apply to Admins, Instructors and Students! And usually these ideas were generated by Canvas users in the "Studio" area of the community as what they call "Feature Ideas". So if there is something about Canvas you would like to change you can let them know. And if enough users vote for your idea then it will be placed on the developers "radar" and worked into future release notes. Be sure to search an idea first to make sure it hasn't already been recommended so that we don't dilute the voting pool!

Currently there have been some recent release notes that you might like to know about. For example, we now have access to a New Grade book under Features within our course Settings . It has a bit more functionality than the current one. The best thing about this new grade book is that you have the ability to sort Newest to Oldest so that you no longer need to scroll all the way to the right to see the most recent addition. You can also apply late penalties to assignments by a % and by a number of days.


Another great release is within the Analytics features. There is not a program called Analytics BETA in your Navigation menu. If you drag it to the top you can now use it to help compare students to the class baseline on any given assignment, assignment type or just overall grade. You can compare up to 2 students at a time against the class averages. It can really help you understand what assignments were a struggle for certain students by giving you tangible data in a plot graph.

For students there is now a great new feature within discussions. They can now upload photos directly into discussions from their Chromebooks or phones. When they hit insert image and then select Canvas and My Files, they will be presented with an upload file button to help them select from their files, making it a lot easier than previously when they had to pre-load a photo into their files so that it would be there to insert. Now students can insert photos on the fly.

Here is a link to all the release notes so you can feel free to go back and check out all that has been released even since we started our Canvas journey last Spring!

2018-11-17 New Feature Screencast from Instructure Community on Vimeo.