Instructure has given us the opportunity to test and use new features before they become a permanent feature in Canvas.

Please indicate which features you would like to see in your Canvas instance
by answering the short survey.

 

New Features in Canvas?

Canvas is continually creating new features to improve your experience. The majority of improvements will be made available as part of our regular release cycle. However, some features may change the workflow for common activities in Canvas during your current term and will be placed in your Account Settings as a Feature Option. After a specified period of time, Feature Options will become standard features in Canvas.

• Learn more about Feature Options and how to enable them in the video below.
• New Features already in place within Canvas are explained in the examples below the video.

 

 

New Feature Option Explained

Grades (Student View)

Learning Mastery

Instructors who have enabled the Learning Mastery Gradebook have the option to display outcome results to their students. This view gives students another tool to improve their behavioral learning especially in outcomes where students are average or below mastery.

Notes:

• The Student Learning Mastery Gradebook 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 the Student Learning Mastery Gradebook available to you as a Feature Option within Course Settings, please contact your institutional admin.

• The Student Learning Mastery Gradebook is a separate Feature Option from the Learning Mastery Gradebook. If the Student option is enabled, the view will display to students even if the Learning Mastery Gradebook is not enabled.

Located on the Student Grades page, the student view of the Learning Mastery Gradebook shows students their standards-based performance in the classroom based on the various outcome expectations.

 

 

Students can expand and collapse each outcome to view the outcome descriptions, as well as view any alignments to assignments that exist with that outcome. Outcome mastery for both the overall outcome and the individual outcome descriptions are identified by color, the same found in the Learning Mastery Gradebook: green (mastery), yellow (near mastery), and red (below mastery). An overall outcome will remain red if fewer than half of the individual outcomes have been mastered; once all individual outcomes have been mastered, the overall outcome will turn green.

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New Features Already Implimented

Outcomes

Friendly Name

Users who create new outcomes have the option of creating a friendly name, which is the name that appears to students if they can view Learning Mastery scores on their Grades page. This option allows the full name of the outcome to still exist in the course.

 

People

Group Tabs

People has an updated design that displays access to user groups in the same page view. In Course Navigation, clicking the People link still loads all users in the course, but they are displayed within the Everyone tab. Any existing user groups will be listed as additional tabs for easy access to the group information.

 

 

If you do not have any user groups in your course, Canvas will display a Groups tab that will take you to the student groups creation page. You can also create a group by clicking the Add Group Set button or the sidebar’s View User Groups button.

 

For students, group tabs are also incorporated on the People page.

Groups

Group Set Drop-down Menu

When viewing a student group, instructors can easily switch and view all groups within a group set by clicking the drop-down arrow next to the group name.

Edit Group Name

Instructors and student group leaders will see an Edit Group link as part of the group dashboard. This link allows quick access to edit the name of the group. Additional editing functionality will be available in a future release.

 

Updated Features

Course Dashboard

Course Status

The Course Dashboard helps prominently display the course status in the sidebar, where courses can be more easily published using the Publish button. If necessary, a course can also be unpublished in the sidebar. We recommend not publishing the course until it is complete, as publishing a course generates invitations for students to join the course.

Once a published course contains graded student submissions, the course status buttons will disappear as the course can no longer be unpublished.

 

Course Settings

Course Status

The Course Settings page will also display the course status in the Course Details tab. If the course cannot be unpublished, the hover text will notify you accordingly.

 

Files

Document Previewing

Canvas has made a change to the document preview program used within Canvas. All functionality remains the same but the design has been updated across the menu bar. The full-screen option is also available as part of the new previewer.

Note: This feature is being rolled out to all accounts individually and may already be available in your production environment. However, if your document preview program has not yet changed, it is not yet available to your institution.  

 

Groups (Student View)

Page Redesign

Students have a new Groups view for an enhanced user experience. On the Groups page, students can view the different groups in their course and each group’s respective group set. Students can also view the status of each group. If a group is a self sign-up group, students can leave and join groups; if they are a member of a group, they can click the Visit link for easy access to the group dashboard.

Note: New Student Groups Page is an Account-level feature option, which means that once it is enabled by the institutional admin, the feature can be used in all courses automatically. If you are an instructor and do not see the updated design on the Student Groups Page when using Student View, please contact your institutional admin.

 

 

Students can click the name of a group to view all group members. They can also use the search field to locate groups or people in a group.