Thursday, June 27, 2013

Cha-cha-Changes!


It's feature release time in Canvas again!  As of June 22, these changes were implemented

Conferences Interface

Conferences are now arranged by New and Concluded. 


Conferences Recording Feature


You may see this in Instructure's notes.  This isn't available at CCC yet.  I'll announce as soon as I know though!

Discussions Interface

The Discussions tool also received a revamp.  You will noticed Pinned Discussions (which allow you to display some discussions topics at the top of your students' lists), Discussions (for normal discussions), and Closed for Comments (which are locked discussions that students can view, but no longer participate in).  
Screen_Shot_2013-06-26_at_11.45.18_PM.png

 Students and instructors can also mark all messages as read.   
Screen_Shot_2013-06-26_at_11.45.36_PM.png


People Interface

People received a revamp too.  CCC manages enrollments through Banner (or SIS) so some features listed are not available to instructors.  
For the instructors and students, the roster is easier to read though.  Please contact elearning if your list of students does not match those found in Banner/Web4 (your official roster).

Notifications

Improved Notifications Descriptions

Notification preferences now have better descriptions when you mouse over the topic! You can use this guide get you started.  

Instructor Grading Notifications

Instructors will only receive notifications for exam submissions that require manual grading, such as essay questions.

Gradebook

Instructors receive a warning when curving student grades. Pre-curved grade histories will be available, but the curving action is irreversible.



Bug fixes

Accessibility

Radio/checkbox labels are now supported to correctly associate with each quiz question.

 Assignments

Assignment titles can be no longer than 255 characters.

Discussions

  • Discussions unlock according to their specified date.
  • Discussions titles can be no longer than 255 characters.

Collaborations

Collaboration titles can be no longer than 255 characters.

Grades

Student what-if scores round to two decimal places.

Files

Files associate file attachments by user, not the user’s location. This fix especially benefits users who associate with multiple accounts.

Modules

  • Files associated with modules can be accessed correctly from the Modules page.
  • Pages associated with modules appear correctly for imported courses.

Pages

Page titles and media comment titles can be no longer than 255 characters.

Permissions

Role names can include a period or a forward slash.

Quizzes

  • Quiz titles can be no longer than 255 characters.
  • Item analysis can generate correct quiz statistics with zero variance. For more details about variance, view the item analysis PDF.

 

Other Updates

APIs

Assignments

Students can upload unlimited files to submit an assignment.

Course Settings

All user management tasks have been moved to the People page. The Course Settings User tab no longer includes user information. To help direct administrators, the User tab has a link to the People page.

Personal Settings

Users will see a warning pop-up notification when they change their settings to a crowd-sourced language. This notification applies to language changes made in course, account, and profile settings.

Quizzes

Question Icons
Icons in the quiz sidebar have been added to help students identify the state of each question. Unanswered questions are indicated by a question mark, while completed questions are indicated by a checkmark.

 Quiz Statistics

The Quiz statistics .csv file loads faster to better accommodate large courses.

Rich Content Editor

The default padding around Canvas images in the Rich Content Editor is now 5 pixels instead of 0 pixels.



Quiz Time Limits

http://www.wdcs.org/wdcskids/en/story_details.php?select=864

Time limits in Quizzes

If you set a time limit for a quiz in Canvas, it will now continue to countdown as soon as the student begins the quiz.  Even if they leave Canvas and come back, the timer will continue to count down!  How awesome is that!?