Technically Speaking

Canvas release updates.

By Information Technology Services

June 17, 2021

Canvas regularly updates and improves the features available for online courses. Information Technology Services wanted to share a few interesting feature updates that will be available in Canvas beginning Sunday.

Release notes

Canvas is making it easier for instructors to stay up to date with the latest changes and features via release information in the Help Menu. Release notes display a summary of a feature or multiple features available to the user and provide a link where the user can view more details.

The Canvas Help Menu will display an indicator when a release note has been published for the user’s role and, when accessed, will also display the most recent 10 release notes posted for the user’s role. If a user has more than one role in Canvas, they will receive the release notes for both roles.

The release-note option can be turned on and off using the toggle button at the bottom of the Help Menu.

Important! Only default features available to all Canvas users will be included as release-note entries in the Help Menu. Changes to features unique to MSU Denver’s Canvas environment may not be announced this way. Major changes of this variety will continue to be shared via the Early Bird or targeted email communications.

Quiz-item bank-sharing options

When instructors share an item bank in New Quizzes, the item bank supports a new View permission, which can be given to a user and provides access to the bank as read-only. The user who shares an item bank can continue to specify editing access for other users. Permissions are selected at the time that an item bank is shared.

Additionally, item banks can be shared with an account or a course. Only administrators can manage access for item banks shared at the account level. If given editing permissions, all instructors and teaching assistants can edit an item bank that is shared with the course.

Please see the official New Quizzes Item Bank Management video from Canvas for more information.

SpeedGrader Comment Library

When instructors and other graders access SpeedGrader, the comments field includes a Feedback icon that opens the Comment Library. Comments can be entered in the text field and added to the Comment Library. This allows instructors to create and save commonly used comments to be reused across multiple students and assignments.

Please see the official SpeedGrader Comment Library video from Canvas for more information.

Discussions Redesign (Beta)

Important! This option is still in Beta and is open for early release. This means this feature has not been fully tested and may have unknown issues. You can turn this feature on or off as desired.

ITS wanted to share this option so instructors who are interested in this feature can experiment with and test this early release. Instructors can enable this “Beta” Discussions interface within their Sandboxes or courses as desired.

Please see the official Discussions Redesign video from Canvas for more information.