In the UX process of discovering what is useful and usable, learning moments (mistakes) have an upside: lots of cautionary examples to share. Enjoy this selection of standout bloopers and rookie mistakes.The iterative worlds of SAM, Agile, and ADDIE ...

Canvas DashboardThe Dashboard is the very first screen when we come arrive into Canvas after successful authentication.  At the University of Minnesota it goes to “Card View” by default, which represents your courses as “cards” but I tend to call the...

A space where news and reactions to the proposed Thoma Bravo acquisition can be gathered that would be of interest to the community. Please add additional resources, questions or concerns in the comments.3/25/2020 UpdateIt is a done deal! Instructure...

One of the big hassles with testing accommodations is having students submit a testing request EVERY TIME for each individual test within any course. This is no longer the case with New Quizzes.Here is an example from Pasadena City College (PCC), our...

Just before I get into the SpeedGrader, there has been some changes to the New Quizzes feature on November 16. You can still add/edit/remove any rubrics, but you cannot modify the instructions once the Quizzes 2 LTI is added.Now to the main story. In...

My team created a post on our blog on the New Gradebook Grade Posting Policy for our instructors. You are welcome to share it with your instructors. As the policy is updated, I will update this same link. Grade Posting Policy Use and Scenarios  

At FIU Online (based in Miami, Florida International University) we are blessed to be able to participate in a variety of professional development opportunities, such as leading conference presentations or attending at conferences. For the past two y...

I don't know about you, but I love podcasts. I would never do my own, so I especially laud and respect those that do. Know what else I love? Canvas & the Canvas Community.  Now those two loves have mashed up like PB & J, introducing the CanvasCasters...

Updated 3/19/20: Option 2 Ignore the warning did not work as expected for and assignment that had been graded.Introduction Students working in groups to learn just learn better.  That is what years of research have shown us.  Managing groups can be d...

Having just delivered some PowerPoint training to students about making their presentations more effective, I thought I'd take some of my own medicine and start with a * bang * - hence the title of the piece which might have brought you here looking ...

WARNING - THIS IS QUITE A LONG POST BUT IT HAS LOTS OF PICTURES!In my school we are very fortunate to have a 1-1 device model based on the Microsoft Surface Pro. All staff, teaching and support, have a device and this device is the same as the one us...

I danced a little jig when I saw that the Canvas Community gamification/reward system has been restored. I didn’t realise how much I had missed those regular notifications of missions completed, badges awarded, points gained. 

Over the last several months, the Instructure product team has been working with Google to transition the existing Google Apps LTI to the new Google Assignments tool. This transition allows Google to maintain their own integration with Canvas, which ...

As a humanities teacher, I love using the RSS feed for Announcements.  There are some phenomenal news feeds and podcasts that support a variety of my course content and it was awesome to have the announcements automatically appear in my Canvas course...

Over the summer we gave the New Gradebook a good “tire kicking” before releasing it en masse this fall.  Most of the changes are subtle, some changes are powerful but just under the surface. However, some changes are very informational, yet are confu...

   BackgroundAuthentication WorkflowPrerequisitesConfiguringTrusted Canvas Instancein CanvasAdditional Reading   Background   A Canvas Trust needs to be established between two different Canvas instances. An explanation of Trusts can be found here. ...

We have set up a custom grading scheme linking Mastery style statements to points score in a Student Self Review form (disguised as a New Quizzes quiz) in Food Technology lessons.There are 15 questions that the students answer with statements that re...

Root Account Admins hold the keys to creating and maintaining a successful Canvas Instance.    No pressure there!  Many decisions and considerations need to be made when choosing settings, customizing roles, adding integrations and more.  The Canvas ...

It's the start of another school year, so what better time to use a tool that will make communicating with your students so much easier.  Announcements is so much better than just sending an email to your whole class. If you are not using the Canvas ...

Before I begin this blog, I do want to send huge kudos to erinhallmark who kept me sane through a more-than-trying Canvas release week.  Erin, you are a hero who stuck with us and helped throughout the week. However, I must articulate my frustration ...

Next September will be the beginning of our fourth year of Canvas (well, 31/2 as we had had a phased launch).  I have been thinking more and more about conducting a formal audit of the courses and getting our departments to review their courses.By ch...

In one of the courses that I have been responsible for there is a final oral presentation with formal opponents who have previously written an opposition report. During the final oral presentation, I have found it very useful to have a spreadsheet wi...

Note: There are easier ways to embed a Google Document, but I found that the other options caused problems: the document would be too small, would not update (or very slow to update), and/or it was hard to navigate. The steps below are more extensive...

I love it when asking a question prompts me to think about and reasearch the actual answer; since I had already typed most of this posting when the solution came to me, I decided to complete it anyway. The topic above is answered herewithin!When mana...

I realize this is a bit 'meta' but I wanted to highlight the usefulness of the Canvas guides. Each of the guides has a table of contents that makes it really easy to find the topic you are looking for. Below is a Google Doc on using the Canvas guides...

I had a situation this morning when I needed to "act as" a student in a course via the Canvas Student app. I knew the "Act as User" functionality was there but I never had an opportunity to try it out.I decided to make a Canvas admin guide on how to ...

I was so excited by this month's blogging challenge - and now that the school year has ended, it feels like the right time for reflecting and cleaning up. Everyone has a few beliefs or assumptions as starting points for how they design, and those bel...

Here are some ideas for instructors to engage students in Canvas Groups:Collaborative Writing and Notetaking (Documents), Presentations, SpreadsheetsAsk students to use the Collaborations feature in their Groups to collaborate on documents, presentat...

WHAT IS CHANGING The Learning Services Team has offered the Be The Hero, Quick Start Admin Guide, in CanvasNet and for import from the Canvas Commons. Some clients may have also received a course import file and added this resource directly to their ...

Assignments are the fundamental building blocks in a Canvas course. They are the milestones that students can achieve.