There are a number of new features available on Canvas, including course images, calendar event edits, look and feel of multiple pages, options to underline links, anonymous grading, conference captioning, and a new desktop sharing system for conferences.
Dashboard: Course Images
Provided by Instructure
Instructors can now add an image within the course settings, which will show for all students, TAs and instructors on the Canvas dashboard.
Canvas Guide: How do I add an image to a course card in the Dashboard?
Calendar: Events can be edited
Provided by Instructure
Instructors can now edit an event that has been added to the Canvas calendar, to move the event from one calendar to another.
Updated look and feel
Provided by Instructure
The pages that include a listing of assignments, conferences, modules, and quizzes have been updated with a new look and feel. This update provides more vital information immediately, in a streamlined interface.
Highlights from the updates:
- Icons are now larger
- The content can be viewed with a mobile device
- For instructors, the green bar to the left of the item now indicates the item has been published
Personal Settings: Underline all links
Provided by Instructure
You can now opt to see all links as underlined text.
Assignments: Anonymous Grading
Provided by Instructure
When an instructor downloads the submissions for an anonymous assignment, the submitters’ names will no longer appear within the filename of the submission.
Assignments: Turnitin submission processing
Provided by Instructure
Canvas continues to work to improve the connections between Canvas and Turnitin, to enable instructors to obtain the originality score through Turnitin, while utilizing Canvas’ SpeedGrader tool for assignment feedback and scoring. The system has been updated to prompt Canvas to repeat the process of requesting the Turnitin processed files for 24 hours, so the submissions can be processed for SpeedGrader.
Conferences: Live captioning
Provided by Instructure
People who initiate a conference can now identify an individual participant or group of participants, to provide captioning in real time for the conference session.
Canvas Guides:
- How do I create live captioning in a conference as a moderator?
- How do I use the Conferences interface as a participant?
Conferences: Tool update
Provided by Instructure
The BigBlueButton tool that is used to host conferences through Canvas has been significantly updated. The Conferences interface offers faster desktop sharing with full-screen capturing. The presenter can also pause or resume desktop sharing. Additionally, the desktop sharing process has changed to run as a Java application to support all browsers, including Chrome.
