Changing local wording

[sbattis_groton]

We're working through a small pilot with Canvas right now, and one recurring request among faculty is to be able to adjust the wording of standard Canvas dialogs (e.g. dialing back the "does not count towards final grade" messaging of ungraded assignments, or renaming Quizzes as Online Quizzes, etc.).

Seems like, from a technical standpoint, this would be about defining a custom language pack for the system. Having said that casually, however, that seems like a non-starter for both Instructure and for me. I have, in the past, used the CSS/JavaScript injection of themes to really go at the UI, but I'd rather not take that approach this time.

Are there any elegant solutions for this?

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Hi there, @sbattis_groton ...

I don't really have a solution for you, but I wanted to throw this out there for your consideration...which you may have already thought of as you have weighed the pros and cons.  One thing to keep in mind is that if you do make any changes to the standard wording that is displayed in the Canvas interface, it will not match any of the Guides that the Canvas Documentation Team at Instructure maintains.  So, if your instructors are looking for help documentation on specific wording they see in your Canvas environment, they may have a bit more difficulty finding exactly what they are looking for because the wording isn't the same as in the official documentation.

I hope this will help in some way.  Good luck as you continue to weigh options like this.

[sbattis_groton]

@Chris_Hofer that is a strong point!