The Sheridan Center's Digital Learning and Design Team would like to announce updates made in preparation for the Fall 2023 semester. If you have any questions about any of the updates below, please contact us at [email protected].
Canvas Office Hours
For the start of the Fall 2023 semester the DLD will be offering 15-minute Canvas Office Hours. Please use this scheduler link to find and book your session.
Canvas-integrated learning tool updates
The following Canvas-integrated learning tools were updated in preparation for Fall 2023. Please read the summary for each update to see how this might impact your old Canvas assignments/activities as well as versions you may have copied into your Fall 2023 Canvas sites. Please see below for more details about each tool.
McGraw-Hill
Change: Installed new LTI 1.3 version; LTI 1.1 remains installed as well
Summary: McGraw-Hill will be sunsetting it's 1.1 integration at the end of 2024. In preparation, we have installed the updated 1.3 version of the tool. For instructors using McGraw-Hill products in collaboration with the Bookstore, you may continue using your existing links, but if you are interested in upgrading early, please see this documentation on how to link to link you McGraw content to your Canvas course using the newly installed LTI 1.3. If you need help with this tool, please contact the McGraw-Hill vendor who assists with your textbook content.
Accessibility (UDOIT)
Change: Accessibility (UDOIT) (also known as UDOIT Cloud 3.0) installed by request only
Summary: Accessibility (UDOIT) will now be available for use in course by request only. Previously, the tool was available to be enabled in the Course Navigation menu of all Canvas course sites. This shift in installation is to help streamline and monitor UDOIT usage as well as to provide faculty with an opportunity to meet with DLD team members to discuss accessibility and the messages that UDOIT provides for resource remediation. If you need help with this tool, use this scheduler link to book a consultation.
Additional Note: Instructors may request Accessibility (UDOIT) be added to their course by submitting this request form. Consultations will be provided to all those who request the tool.
New Canvas-Integrated Learning Tools
Atomic Search
Atomic Search was installed in early March 2023 as a tool to allow instructors and TAs to search all their Canvas course content. The Atomic Search tool is currently only available to instructors and TAs and allows them to search content contained within Canvas courses where they have a Teacher or TA level role. For more details, please visit our help article on Atomic Search.
Peerceptiv (limited pilot)
For Fall 2023, there will be a limited pilot of the Peerceptiv peer review tool. Peerceptiv is a research-backed peer review tool that integrates with Canvas to coordinate student writing submissions and facilitate peer reviews and feedback. For this Fall, the pilot is limited and is already full, but if you have interest in using Peerceptiv in the future, please let us know at [email protected].
Slack Course Workspaces
Brown University has procured an enterprise license of Slack. For the initial Fall 2023 roll-out (see the Today@Brown announcement), Slack will only be available to faculty and students enrolled in academic courses via the Slack integration with Canvas. With this Slack-Canvas integration, instructors and TAs will be able to enable and create a Slack Course Workspace where the member list is tied to and controlled by the associated course's Canvas People tool roster. Please visit our help article on Slack Course Workspaces (via Canvas) for more information.
Other Updates
Instructure Support Hotline
The vendor (Instructure) Canvas support hotline phone numbers for Faculty and Students have been collapsed into one phone number. All users will now use the same phone number and will select their role from the hotline phone options (you can view the hotline number when you click the Help button within Canvas).
Harmonize AI
Harmonize now has optional AI prompt support for instructors. If desired, instructors can opt to use the new Brainstorm tool to generate discussion prompts that incorporate Bloom's taxonomy principles to increase complexity. Click here to learn more about Harmonize's Brainstorm tool.
Updated Enhancements and Feature Options for Canvas
Enhancements
The following enhancements have been updated/configured for Canvas and will automatically appear in your Canvas course sites:
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Grades Area Enhancements:
- Enhanced Gradebook Filters - Provides instructors advanced, customizable filter views for the Grades area.
- Apply Scores to Ungraded Items - Allows you to apply a score to all remaining ungraded submissions for an assignment group (or all submissions via the Totals column).
- Final Grade Override - Allows instructors to override the total percentage score that is automatically tallied from graded activities. NOTE: Total/Final grades are not published to Banner - instructors will still need to post final grades in Banner.
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SpeedGrader Enhancements
- Emojis for Submissions Comments in SpeedGrader - Instructors and students can now add emoji reactions to their comments/replies posted through the Canvas SpeedGrader comments tool.
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Student Submission Enhancements:
- Confetti for On-Time Student Submissions - a brief confetti display will appear on screen for students when they successfully submit their assignments on time.
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Other Enhancements:
- Confetti for Valid Links - a brief confetti display will appear on screen if an instructor runs the Course Link Validator and there are no invalid links and/or images.
Feature Options
The following feature options are disabled by default but available for instructors to enable in their Canvas course sites as they see fit. Please see the article on how to manage new features for a course to learn how to enable these options in your Canvas course site:
- New Course & User Analytics - Provides more granular analytics on course/student activity. Please see these articles on New Analytics for details.
- Moderated Grading - Allows TAs to grade student submissions, but requires an instructor to moderate and approve the TA grades before they are finalized. This feature must be added to each assignment for which you want Moderated Grading. Please see this article on how to add moderated grading to an assignment.
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Anonymous Grading** - This will remove the students' names from SpeedGrader so that all graders cannot see whose submission they are grading for the selected assignment. This feature must be added to each assignment for which you want Anonymous Grading. Please see this article on how to add anonymous grading to an assignment.
(NOTE: If the student has entered the name into the file or file name of their submission, that will still be visible to the graders.) - Anonymous Instructor Annotations - This will remove grader names from comments made to student submissions on the SpeedGrader annotation tools. This will not hide the names from comments made in the general comments field. This feature must be added to each assignment for which you want Anonymous Instructor Annotations. Please see this article on how to add anonymous instructor annotations to an assignment.
** This is different than the hiding student names via SpeedGrader option which only hides student names for the individual person who enables it. The new Anonymous Grading feature hides student names from all graders who view assignments in SpeedGrader that have this feature enabled.