Here are the highlights for Instructure’s Canvas feature release on Saturday August 21, 2021:
- Teachers can see a new tab in the New Analytics tool labeled “Attendance” that displays Yes/No activity indicators for each student in your Canvas course for each day of the week. A more precise name for this would be, “Daily Canvas Activity.” At this time, teachers cannot choose activity criteria. We have decided to activate the tab with its default, low-bar “Course Access” criterion of viewing something in the course. Click here to read all about this New Analytics “Attendance” feature.
- Teachers can activate a notification badge for the Rich Content Editor’s Accessibility Checker in the Feature Previews tab in course Settings. Instructure currently plans to activate this feature for everyone in the September 18, 2021 production release.
This feature concerns the Accessibility Checker built into the Canvas content editor. We also have a third-party Accessibility Check tool that teachers access in its own course navigation menu link. - All users will see role-specific release notes when available in the Help menu. This feature was announced in June. Instructure is turning this feature on for all institutions (with the option for institutions to turn it off again). We continue to monitor and consider the desirability of this feature.
Another noteworthy feature is included in Instructure’s Canvas Code Deploy on Wednesday August 18, 2021.
- Teachers who use New Quizzes can print their quiz with or without answers to have a paper quiz or paper key. New Quizzes is off by default. Teachers can activate it on the Feature Previews tab under course Settings.
Click here to read full release notes for August 21, 2021. The full notes contain more details about these and other changes, a link to a screencast explaining some of the changes contained in the release, a comments section, and role-specific user summaries. You can join in the discussion if you log in to the Canvas Community.
Production feature releases arrive on the third Saturday of each month. Click here to view release notes on Canvas Community. Instructure also lists noteworthy changes planned for future releases.
Reminder from July: Instructure has designated regular maintenance windows for us on the first and third Thursdays of each month (e.g. August 5 and 19, 2021) from 1:05am to 3:05am Eastern Time. They expect actual downtime to last a few minutes. They may not do maintenance during every window. Click here to read the full announcement.
Header photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash