Canvas Updates

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<h2>Quizzes</h2>
<h2>Quizzes</h2>
<h3>Quiz Log Auditing</h3>
<h3>Quiz Log Auditing</h3>
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<p>Students and instructors can view progress logs for course quizzes. This feature is designed to help instructors investigate problems that a student may have in the quiz. Students can also view the log for their own quizzes.</p>
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<p>January 8 update: Quiz Log Auditing was previously mentioned as a new feature in this release. However, this feature will now be part of a future release. You can learn more about Quiz Log Auditing in the [https://help.instructure.com/entries/61326810-12-29-14-Canvas-Beta-Release-Notes December 29, 2014 Canvas beta release notes].</p>
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<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>Note</strong>: Quiz Log Auditing is a course-level feature option, which means that once it is enabled by the institutional admin, the feature can be enabled by instructors on a course-to-course basis. If you are an instructor and do not see Quiz Log Auditing available to you as a Feature Option within Course Settings, please contact your institutional admin.</p>
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<p>Instructors can view the quiz log by showing student quiz results and clicking the name of a student. The student quiz results page will show the status of the quiz and the View Log link. Canvas generates the quiz log when the student clicks the Take This Quiz button. </p>
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<p>Students can also access the quiz log by clicking the link for the quiz attempt they want to view. </p>
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<p>Each log shows a timestamp of the quiz action, including reading a quiz question, selecting a quiz answer, changing a quiz answer, and submitting the quiz. The log also shows if the student left the quiz (either by navigating away from the page or viewing another window in the browser) and resumed the quiz. To refresh log data, click the refresh button at the top of the browser window.</p>
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<p>Each attempt shows the start date and time for the attempt. If the student has more than one quiz attempt, the log shows the last attempt. Users can always view prior attempts by clicking the number of the attempt. </p>
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<h1>Other Updates</h1>
<h1>Other Updates</h1>

Revision as of 18:08, 9 January 2015

Production Release Notes for Saturday, January 10, 2015

Upcoming Canvas Change: Quiz Statistics Feature Option : On January 31, New Quiz Statistics will no longer be a Feature Option in Canvas and the feature will apply to all users with an instructor role. (Learn more about the new Quiz Statistics.)

In this production release (January 10), Instructors can pass back grades from the Gradebook to PowerSchool, and set up log auditing to monitor activity in student quizzes. Assignments have an increased number of Turnitin status attempts, and several areas in Canvas include some small design updates.

The production notes also include updates to existing Canvas features and fixed bugs.

Note: Production release notes indicate Canvas updates that will be included with Saturday’s release and are subject to change. New features may differ from those available in your beta environment.

 

Contents

New Features

Quizzes

Quiz Log Auditing

January 8 update: Quiz Log Auditing was previously mentioned as a new feature in this release. However, this feature will now be part of a future release. You can learn more about Quiz Log Auditing in the December 29, 2014 Canvas beta release notes.

Other Updates

Assignments

Turnitin Status Attempts

Canvas has increased the number of status attempts made for a Turnitin assignment. Instead of doubling beginning at 5 minutes, attempts will double beginning at 2 minutes: 2 minutes, 4 minutes, 8 minutes, 16 minutes, etc. This change helps instructors view Turnitin reports more quickly.

Course Setup Checklist

Checklist Redesign

The Course Setup Checklist has been redesigned for a better user experience and displays as a full window. Each sidebar item shows the status of your course and provides quick links to each Canvas area. To close the window and return to Canvas, click the close icon in the upper right of the window, or press the Escape button on your keyboard.

No functionality has been changed in this feature. As a reminder, checklist items are moderated by user permissions and display appropriately. For instance, if an institution does not allow instructors to add students to the course, the Add Students checklist item will not appear. Options are also responsive for the add TAs and Publish course checklist items.  

Note: This redesign does not apply to any other checklist, such as for ePortfolios.

Footer

User Research

The Canvas UX Research and Design team is looking for design feedback from Canvas users, including interaction with new design ideas and concepts. If you are interested in participating, please sign up using the link in the Canvas footer (located at the bottom of most Canvas pages).

Languages

Date and Time Display

Date and time stamps in Canvas have been updated to reflect 24-hour time formats for applicable languages.

Canvas Interface

Navigation Menu

As part of our interface redesign, the left navigation menu (User, Course, and Account Navigation) include a slightly modified interface. We’ve also touched up a few other icons in Canvas to meet better color contrast ratios. More information can found in our canvas.beta.instructure.com/styleguide.

No actual functionality will be affected by this work—this is a purely visual change. However, if you have changed the appearance of the left navigation menu via custom CSS, please check to ensure your styles work with the new design, especially if you have changed the background color for your navigation menus. More details about the navigation changes can be found with the original changes found in the September 27, 2014 Canvas release notes .

Activity Stream Notification Indicators

In the User Dashboard activity stream we've removed the indicators that show the number of notifications. However, new activity is still shown by a blue dot next to the activity type. Users can still expand the activity to view all notifications for that activity type. The indicator also appears next to the specific notification item. This change also applies to the activity stream on the Course Dashboard.

Platform Integrations

Fixed Bugs

Accessibility

The following accessibility issues have been corrected within Canvas:

General Updates

Assignments

Calendar

Conversations

Course Navigation

Dashboards

Discussions

Faculty Journal

Files

Gradebook

Modules

Pages

Rubrics

SpeedGrader

User Profile

Admin

User Account Details

Sub-Account admins can view User Account Details if they have the View Statistics permission.

Explanation: When sub-account admins viewed the details of a user in the course, sub-account admins were not able to view the user account details button. Canvas code has been updated to confirm permissions for the admin and display the User Account Details button as appropriate.

Analytics

Test Student Scores

Test Student scores are not included in analytics assignment data.

Explanation: When an instructor viewed analytics for a course, test student scores were appearing as part of the data. Canvas code has been updated to remove Test Student data from all assignment statistics.

Assignments

Course Notifications

Only active students receive course notifications.

Explanation: When a student completed an assignment in a course and were later removed from the course, the student was still receiving notifications if there was a grade change, such as when the Displayed Grade As option was changed for the assignment. Canvas code has been updated to only send notifications to active students in the course.  

Personal File Submissions

Students can submit assignments uploaded to their their personal files.

Explanation: When a student submitted an assignment from their personal files, Canvas was creating an error that said the file was not authorized for the submission. This behavior occurred when an assignment restricted the submission file type. Canvas code has been updated to accept file submissions from personal files as long as the file contains the correct file extension.

Assignment Shell Window and More Options

Assignments retains the due date when a user edits an assignment and selects the More Options button.

Explanation: When an instructor edited an assignment, deleted the due date, and then selected the More Options button, the previous due date transferred to the Assignment details page. Canvas code has been updated to retain all entries in the assignment shell window when viewing more options on the assignment details page.

Assignment Sections

When a section is deleted in a course, the section is also removed from any assigned assignments.

Explanation: When a section was deleted in a course, any assignments that were associated with the section did not remove the section from the assignment. This behavior caused confusion if another section was created with the same name. Canvas code has been updated to remove all association with sections that have been removed from a course. If an assignment is only assigned to the section that was deleted, the assignment will display a warning stating that no students are assigned to the assignment.

Course Imports

Course Copy

Admins can locate courses to copy in their account by typing in a course name and having Canvas auto-complete the entry, or they can use a course drop-down menu if there are fewer than 100 courses in the account.

Explanation: When an admin attempted to copy a course, the list of courses paginated at 500 courses and appeared as an unordered list. To be consistent with other course listing behavior throughout Canvas, Canvas code has been updated to display course listings alphabetically. Additionally, the course drop-down menu only appears if there are fewer than 100 courses. If an account contains over 100 courses, admins can type the name of a course and Canvas will auto-complete any applicable course names.

Files

Deleted Files Preview

Users are notified if they preview a file that has been deleted or doesn’t exist.

Explanation: If a user tried to preview a file for a URL that had been deleted, Canvas skipped the preview and showed any previews that were also part of the file link. Canvas code has been updated to show a message that the file cannot be found.

Content Sidebar

In the Content Selector, if an instructor or TA uploads a file that already exists in Canvas, files will add an iterator to the file to prevent duplicates (i.e. file.jpg, file-1.jpg). 

Explanation: When an instructor or TA uploaded a file using the Content Selector, the file could be uploaded multiple times without renaming the file. Canvas code has been updated to include an iterator to file names to prevent duplicates.

File Storage Statistics

File statistics show the correct number of files and storage space.

Explanation: Some courses were not displaying accurate statistics for files and storage space within the course. This behavior occurred because of attachment naming inconsistencies between local account IDs and the global account IDs. Canvas code has been updated to match files against either local or global account IDs for accurate statistics.

Gradebook

Multiple Assignments

When a student submits multiple assignments, instructors can leave comments for each submission in the Gradebook and select the submission in the drop-down menu.

Explanation: When a student submitted an assignment multiple times and the instructor wanted to leave a comment in the Gradebook, the drop-down list of submissions showed the same submission time for the first and last submission. Canvas code has been updated to display the original time of the first submission instead of copying the most recent submission’s date and time.

Gradebook Average

Students view the same scoring average on the Grades page that displays for instructors in the Gradebook.

Explanation: When an instructor viewed the details of an assignment in the Gradebook, the average score differed from the average score shown to students. This behavior occurred because the average score calculated both active and deleted enrollments. Canvas code has been updated to remove deleted enrollments from grade calculations.

Groups

Courses & Groups Menu

Users can view all groups in the Courses & Groups menu.

Explanation: When a user was added to a group, the group did not always appear under the Courses & Groups drop-down menu. Canvas code has been updated to update a user’s cached groups list when a user is added to a group. The groups list is also updated when a user is removed from a group.

Instructor/TA Profiles

Users can view instructor and TA profiles from within a group.

Explanation: When a user tried to view an instructor or TA from the People section in a group, the group displayed an error message. This behavior occurred because instructors and TAs are not actually members of the group and the links were directing to the group page. Canvas code has been updated to link profile information to the course People page, not the Group People page.  

Group Conferences

Instructors can edit a conference within a group.

Explanation: When an instructor clicked the Edit button for a conference within a group, the button redirected to the course instead of displaying the edit window. Canvas code has been updated to not associate group conferences with course conferences.

Group Assignment Submission Comments

When an instructor deletes a comment from a group assignment, the comment is removed for all group members.

Explanation: When comments sent to all group members were deleted from the submission, the comments were only deleted for the group member whose ID was connected to the group submission. Other group members could still view the comments and instructors could not delete them. Canvas code has been updated to remove group assignment comments for all students associated with the group assignment ID.

Group Discussions

Group members cannot create a group discussion within Groups.

Explanation: When a user created a Discussion from the group home page, the page displayed an option to make the discussion as a group discussion. Users were not able to save the discussion if they checked the box. Canvas code has been updated to not display group discussion options for groups, as the discussion is already part of the group.

Randomly Assign Students and Group Limits

Canvas respects individual group member limits when randomly assigning students to groups.

Explanation: When an instructor created a limit of members within a group set, and then selected the Randomly Assign Students option, Canvas ignored the group limit and assigned all students to a particular group. Canvas code has been updated to respect individual group member limits when randomly assigning students.

Quizzes

QTI Imports

QTI imports do not overwrite answer text for True/False Quiz Questions.

Explanation: When a user imported a QTI file, True/False answer options were being overwritten by the import file so that the top answer was always true regardless of the correct answer.

Rich Content Editor

Embedding Images

Instructors can view more than 10 folders or files within the folders when embedding an image in the Rich Content Editor.

Explanation: When embedding an image with the Rich Content Editor, the Content Selector was not displaying more than 10 course folders, or files within the folders. Canvas code has been updated to display all files within the course. This fix was deployed to production on December 29, 2014.   

Document Previews

After uploading a file in the Content Selector, documents that are supported in the document previewer can be previewed in the Rich Content Editor. 

Explanation: When an instructor uploaded a file using the Content Selector, files that are supported in the document previewer did not include the preview icon. Canvas code has been updated to include the preview icon for all supported file types uploaded through the Content Selector. 

Nested Folder Titles

Nested folders in the Content Selector display the name of each folder.

Explanation: When Files contained a series of nested folders, the Content Selector sometimes displayed nested folder names as undefined. Canvas code has been updated to display the folder name in the Content Selector list.

SpeedGrader

Graded Group Discussions

Replies in graded group discussions appear in SpeedGrader.

Explanation: When a student replied to a graded group discussion, the reply appeared in the discussion but was not appearing in SpeedGrader. Canvas code has been updated to populate missing submissions for graded group discussion replies in SpeedGrader. This fix was deployed to production on December 29, 2014.

User Profile

Time Zones

Users with set time zones can view the profile settings.

Explanation: Users who set a time zone for their account were not able to view their profile settings. This behavior occurred because the code linked to the time zone command froze and did not allow any other internal data to be modified. Canvas code has been updated to create a duplicate string of the data and view user profile settings.


Next release schedule:

Note: You can follow the release schedule on the Canvas Updates calendar

Archived Canvas Updates
Retrieved from "https://lss.at.ufl.edu/help/Canvas_Updates"
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