Increase parity between mobile and web versions of Canvas

[jpoulos]

Theme Overview

There are certain desirable features in the web version of Canvas that people want on the Mobile Apps.

What value could this provide to users?

• Do more things on mobile that can currently only be done on the web.

Why was this theme chosen to open for voting?

April 2023 • As users become more adept at using their mobile devices to learn, they are voicing their additional needs. Understanding our users’ needs by modality will allow us to make more informed decisions about our mobile and web strategy.

Why was this theme not chosen for prioritization?

June 2023 • While we plan to address some ideas within this theme, our Mobile team will not be able to commit to the theme at large given other roadmap priorities. 

[ProductPanda]

Note from Instructure

April 2023 • This theme was chosen to Open for Voting. 

How do Ideas and Themes work in the Instructure Community? 

How do I participate with themes? 

[Jeff_F]

Yesterday I reviewed data from the first two weeks of February to understand our student use profile for devices and browsers.

Device usage:

• 65% of activity is on a PC
• 20% of activity is on a Mac
• 7% of activity is on an iPhone
• 3% of activity is on an Android device
• 2% of activity is on an iPad

And browser usage:

• 62% of the population are using Chrome
• 21% of the population are using Safari
• 5% are using the Canvas app
• 4% are using Firefox
• 1% are using Edge

What conclusions might be drawn from these stats? 

[jozsefdavid]

Hi @Jeff_F ! Thank you for sharing this data with us.

What data source did you use to present these percentages?

[Jeff_F]

@jozsefdavid - 

Hello!  The data source is the Canvas Data Requests table which has a user agent field.  The data in that field is then converted into the usage stats using calculated fields. This approach was first introduced by Brenden_goetz in 2016 or thereabouts.

Best, Jeff

[JamesSekcienski]

It would be nice to be able to access Groups through the mobile app.  Groups may be used with a course, so it could help for students to be able to view their group's content through the mobile app.  In addition, SMS notifications were taken away and users have been directed to rely on push notifications instead.  It would help if they receive a notification from a Group that they could receive it as a push notification and access the information about the Group through the app.  Since Groups may also be used for student organizations, sports, etc, there may be information students need on the go that they won't necessarily have their laptop/desktop available to view.

[elawlor]

As part of this theme, my students request that peer review assignments appear in the mobile app as well as the browser version. Currently they need to use the browser version in order to see and do their assigned peer reviews.

[ProductPanda]

  Comments from Instructure

June 2023 • This theme was not chosen for prioritization.

While we plan to address some ideas within this theme, our Mobile team will not be able to commit to the theme at large given other roadmap priorities.