Rutgers.eduIn an effort to continually improve Canvas, Instructure, the parent company of Canvas, releases Canvas upgrades every third Saturday of the month along with Release Notes. Pertinent features and upgrades are listed below.
In this Canvas release (August 21):
- Online attendance can be set and viewed based on specific user criteria set at the account level. This feature is also used in conjunction with the New Course and User Analytics feature preview.
- New Quizzes build page includes options to print the quiz with and without answers.
- The Accessibility Checker Notification feature preview shows content creators when accessibility concerns are detected without needing to open the Accessibility Checker. This feature preview is opt-in until 2021-09-18.
This announcement lists pertinent updates that affect instructors and students and omits features that are not applicable for Rutgers Canvas.
View Full Release Notes on Instructure Website (8/21/2021)
Updated Features
Online Attendance
Item Bank Management
New Analytics includes an Attendance tab, which updates according to criteria set at the account level. This change allows criteria to update attendance information for individual courses and remove manual attendance tracking.
Instructors
For courses that have enabled New Analytics, Attendance displays as a tab within the page and can be customized by instructors to view specific data. For full details about this feature, please see Canvas Release: New Analytics – Online Attendance Report.
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New Quizzes
Quiz Printing
The Quiz build page includes options to print the quiz with and without answers. This change allows quizzes to be printed in an offline format.
Instructors
For individual quizzes, the Settings menu includes two options:
- Print Key (with Answers)
- Print Blank Quiz
Both quiz options display a Print Quiz window. By default, medium text is selected for the quiz printout. However, two additional larger options are available.
The Print Quiz window always retains the text size selected in the previously printed quiz. To always reset the text size to medium, instructors can deselect the checkbox at the bottom of the window.
When the print preview is generated for a blank quiz, the print dialog window displays the print options for the instructor. However, the quiz also reloads in preview mode. Instructors can exit the preview to return to the quiz editing page.
Rich Content Editor
Accessibility Checker Indicator
The Rich Content Editor indicates when accessibility concerns are detected in the Accessibility Checker. This behavior invites content creators to improve their content and ensure it is accessible to all Canvas users.
All Users
When the Accessibility Checker Notification is enabled for a course, any accessibility issues detected within the Rich Content Editor display an indicator. This indicator helps users know about these issues without having to open the Accessibility Checker.
Canvas Deploys
Canvas deploys contain code changes that are intended to fix bugs, improve performance, and prepare for new features, but they do not affect customer workflows. These deploys take place every two weeks and intended changes in workflow are noted in the Canvas Release Notes published monthly.
Deploy notes include notable fixed bugs and additional updates that do not affect existing user functionality. View last five full Deploy Notes: