Rutgers.eduIn an effort to continually improve Canvas, Instructure, the parent company of Canvas, releases Canvas upgrades every three weeks along with Production Release Notes. Pertinent features and upgrades are listed below. You may view the full Canvas Production Release Notes for June 24, 2017 and its accompanying screencast. The next release will be on July 15.
New Features
Blueprint Courses – Blueprint Courses makes it easy for administrators or designers to deploy, update, and maintain course design templates or components across any number of courses or instructors. For an individual institution, Blueprint Courses allows Canvas admins to create content and learning objects, lock specific settings or content items, and push updates to all associated courses through course syncing.
Any items that are not locked can be managed individually by a course instructor. Content that can be managed by an instructor is not overwritten when the Blueprint Course is synced to associated courses, and new content created in any associated course is also not affected.
For more information about Blueprint Courses, please see the Canvas Release: Blueprint Courses document.
Canvas DocViewer – DocViewer automatically converts common documents types into web-viewable and interactive learning experiences. This feature replaces the current Box previewer and Crocodoc annotation tools in Canvas and provides improved performance. For more information about Canvas DocViewer, please see the Canvas Release: Canvas DocViewer document.
Updated Features
Group Leader Context Card (People) – Group leader links support student context cards. When an instructor opens a group set in a course and clicks the name of a group leader, the student’s context card displays in the sidebar. If the Student Context Card feature is not enabled for an institution, clicking the group leader’s name links to the student’s user details page.
Content Selector Page Links (Rich Content Editor) – In the Content Selector Links tab, the Link to New Page link only displays to users who can edit pages. The Content Selector displays in any area of Canvas with the Rich Content Editor, such as course discussions. When a student views a discussion and creates a reply, the student cannot view the Link to New Page link unless the student can edit a course page. This change does not apply to groups, where students are always given access to edit pages.
Other Updates
Sidebar Links (Course Settings) – The buttons in the sidebar have been changed for consistency with other sidebars and lists throughout Canvas. This change also improves accessibility in the Course Settings page.
Assignment Groups and Total Points (Grades) – In the Student Grades page, the Out of Column displays assignment group point values in courses where students are allowed to view total grades. If a student is not allowed to view total grades, the assignment group displays the total percentage for the assignment group only. Total grades can be restricted by an instructor in Course Settings by hiding the totals in the student grades summary. For courses involved in Multiple Grading Periods, admins can choose to not display totals when students view the All Grading Periods option. This change resolves a fixed bug in Canvas: When a student opened the Grades page and tried to hover over an assignment group percentage total, the assignment group did not display a percentage as tooltip text. Canvas code has been updated to display the group point values and the total number of points in the Out of Column.
Fixed Bugs
Please view the full Canvas Production Release Notes for June 24, 2017 and its accompanying screencast for more information concerning accessibility improvements and other bug fixes.