Canvas Themes

Ideas submitted by Community members are mapped to Themes. All Themes that have not been prioritized (selected by Instructure and the Community to deliver) can be found here.

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109 Themes in: Identified

Increase view options for instructors in gradebook

Status: Identified
Submitted 05-23-2023 Submitted by 05-23-2023 Comments: 0 Referenced Ideas: 2

Theme Overview

Instructors often want to be able to visualize data about their students' performance within the gradebook. This theme is around providing more view options.

What value could this provide to users?

  • Ability to sort scores on various parameters

Enhance contributable items in Canvas Commons

Status: Identified
Submitted 01-31-2023 Submitted by 01-31-2023 Comments: 0 Referenced Ideas: 2

Theme Overview

Better organized resources and search, sort, import and share capabilities within Commons.

What value could this provide to users?

  • Instructors could filter and sort down searches
  • Instructors could share all types of content into Commons including rubrics, syllabi etc.
  • Instructors could import specific items into courses
  • Admins will receive enhanced safeguards during the course import process

Build new or more robust API endpoints

Status: Identified
Submitted 02-06-2023 Submitted by 02-06-2023 Comments: 0 Referenced Ideas: 15

Theme Overview

Certain integration or auditing use cases are impossible due to missing API endpoints, or API fields

What value could this provide to users?

  • Too many to list, but generally just making the API more robust so that better integrations can be built, or admins can get data for various audits and investigations

Add more complexity to Numeric and Formula Question Types for STEM quizzes

Status: Identified
Submitted 04-24-2023 Submitted by 04-24-2023 Comments: 0 Referenced Ideas: 16

Theme Overview

Instructors need more dynamic functionality for Numeric and Formula question types.

What value could this provide to users?

  • STEM teachers would be able to use formula and numeric question types with fewer limitations
  • Better settings to customize formula question types
  • Teachers in STEM classes could ask more complex questions

 

Expose back-end data more readily throughout Canvas

Status: Identified
Submitted 05-01-2023 Submitted by 05-01-2023 Comments: 0 Referenced Ideas: 2

Theme Overview

There are certain important backend data elements that are not readily exposed. This theme encapsulates feature ideas that aim to expose backend data more readily in the API, UI, or reports.

What value could this provide to users?

Decrease friction when launching and using LTI tools

Status: Identified
Submitted 04-28-2023 Submitted by 04-28-2023 Comments: 0 Referenced Ideas: 7

Theme Overview

Users accessing LTI tools want the experience to be seamless so that they do not need to track which service they are using at any given moment, they can just accomplish their work efficiently. The focus of this theme is on enabling tool providers to create smooth user experiences when working between the tool and Canvas.

What value could this provide to users?

  • Making more data available to tool providers so that they can appropriately mirror Canvas experiences.
  • Ensuring the data made available to third party tools matches the data that Canvas uses.

Expand types of questions for more creative assessments

Status: Identified
Submitted 04-24-2023 Submitted by 04-24-2023 Comments: 0 Referenced Ideas: 7

Theme Overview

Instructors need new question types to vary the ways that they can assess mastery of concepts

What value could this provide to users?

  • Teachers would be able to add question types to quizzes in more creative ways
  • Teachers would be able to assess speaking skills through audio recording responses

Facilitate inclusion of diverse student groups in Canvas

Status: Identified
Submitted 04-18-2023 Submitted by 04-18-2023 Comments: 0 Referenced Ideas: 5

Theme Overview

Different student groups have different needs, including those with different abilities, gender identities, learning styles and other characteristics. The goal of this theme is to facilitate inclusion of these students within Canvas.

What value could this provide to users?

  • Improve visibility of user’s selected pronouns to instructors
 

Empower Admin and Teachers to make Data Driven Decisions about the Learner Experience

Status: Identified
Submitted 04-05-2023 Submitted by 04-05-2023 Comments: 0 Referenced Ideas: 1

Theme Overview

In order for instructors and admin to best support learners, they need to be able to gather data about what learners are currently experiencing and the effects it has. This theme is focused on empowering admin and teachers in these decisions by providing them with necessary data.

What value could this provide to users?

  • Data about student-to-student and student-to-teacher interactions
  • Data about student usage of Canvas
  • Data about student responses to teacher interventions

Improve ability for tool developers to use same functionality between Canvas and other LTI Platforms

Status: Identified
Submitted 03-24-2023 Submitted by 03-24-2023 Comments: 0 Referenced Ideas: 3

Theme Overview

Tools can’t afford to write separate integrations for every platform and every difference between our platform and others increases the cost to tool providers to serve our customers. This includes work to follow LTI specifications as well as other development standards.

What value could this provide to users?

  • Reducing integration costs by increasing uniformity makes more tools available in our ecosystem so that customers can leverage more tools to improve learning.

Improve Program Assessment functionality

Status: Identified
Submitted 02-24-2023 Submitted by 02-24-2023 Comments: 0 Referenced Ideas: 1

Theme Overview

Improvements to measure learning program effectiveness

What value could this provide to users?

  • Enable admins and instructors to have more control over reviewers and review strategies of the artifacts

Improved gradebook access and control settings

Status: Identified
Submitted 02-05-2023 Submitted by 02-05-2023 Comments: 0 Referenced Ideas: 11

Theme Overview

Between permissions, assignment settings, and gradebook settings, there still is not enough flexibility to give the correct level of access and control to certain individuals.

What value could this provide to users?

  • Separate various permissions and/or assignment/gradebook settings for further control of read/write/edit access
  • Control over who can edit or post grades and when
  • Allow for grading activity without allowing full gradebook access
  • Increased anonymity for rubrics/outcomes and other grading features
  • Provide additional controls over grading policies

Display or link or organize related items and users better

Status: Identified
Submitted 02-06-2023 Submitted by 02-06-2023 Comments: 0 Referenced Ideas: 3

Theme Overview

Enable linking between related items and users, display and organize them more efficiently

What value could this provide to users?

  • Instructors could be able to link to syllabus in modules in Canvas courses

Empower teachers and admins better manage notifications and communications capabilities for students

Status: Identified
Submitted 02-06-2023 Submitted by 02-06-2023 Comments: 0 Referenced Ideas: 10

Theme Overview

Teachers and Admins feel that students are missing important information related to their courses, or are confused my having too many; it's difficult to help students get the right notification configuration for a productive learning experience.

What value could this provide to users?

  • Enable/Disable Notifications for Select Courses and Sub-accounts at Admin Level
  • Student Notifications Automatically Turned On For Crucial Messages and Comments
  • Reduce notification noise by giving teachers the ability to mute notifications for specific activities or timeframes
  • Ability to set default notifications at role/account/sub-account/course level
  • Admins can disable individual users/courses conversation capabilities
  • Entering a description when marking "Notify users that this content has changed"

Expand Commons resource details and collaboration capabilities

Status: Identified
Submitted 02-06-2023 Submitted by 02-06-2023 Comments: 0 Referenced Ideas: 4

Theme Overview

Instructors want to see additional metadata about Commons resources as well as additional ways to collaborate with the author and other instructors.

What value could this provide to users?

  • Instructors have the ability to view additional meta data about the resource such as assignment creator and edit history
  • Instructors have a way to collaborate with the course author
  • Instructors have a way to share Commons resource comments with multiple graders"

Expand options for quiz formats

Status: Identified
Submitted 02-05-2023 Submitted by 02-05-2023 Comments: 0 Referenced Ideas: 7

Theme Overview

Teachers want more ways to use quizzes beyond the traditional format

What value could this provide to users?

  • Teachers can use quizzes in more innovative ways to enable team-based learning or dynamic quiz branching

Expand quiz settings for greater customization

Status: Identified
Submitted 02-05-2023 Submitted by 02-05-2023 Comments: 0 Referenced Ideas: 36

Theme Overview

Teachers need better ways to make point adjustments and better prompts to remind them of the differentiation between assignment points and question points. Teachers need specialized settings for subsets of students with special requirements.

What value could this provide to users?

  • Quiz settings make it possible to control when a student sees their results and what they can see
  • A Practice quiz would not count as an assignment
  • Quiz setting to allow subsequent quiz attempts to build on the last attempt only with questions that were incorrect

Facilitate better navigation and access to quiz actions

Status: Identified
Submitted 02-05-2023 Submitted by 02-05-2023 Comments: 0 Referenced Ideas: 12

Theme Overview

Teachers need to be able to execute actions from easily accessible locations and navigate between related screens easily

What value could this provide to users?

  • Better Navigation between quiz settings and other settings
  • Consistent experience with Assignments, Module, and Quiz pages
  • Better organization for quizzes
  • More useful actions under the kebab menus on each page
  • Index pages showing more relevant information for items
  • Add functionality that allows a user to export a New Quiz

Improve cross-student collaboration and communication

Status: Identified
Submitted 02-05-2023 Submitted by 02-05-2023 Comments: 0 Referenced Ideas: 14

Theme Overview

Students need more notification and information to submit peer reviews. Instructors want to use peer reviews in calculating grades. Students need better resources to make use of group homepages or templates for planning

What value could this provide to users?

  • Peer Reviews are more valuable when they can be used for grading
  • Peer Evaluations for team members on group projects
  • Peer Reviews are easier with a better-designed UI that shows rubrics and other reference information on the screen

Improve engagement and awareness by adding new notifications

Status: Identified
Submitted 02-05-2023 Submitted by 02-05-2023 Comments: 0 Referenced Ideas: 15

Theme Overview

Users have identified a suite of notifications that they wish they could receive.

What value could this provide to users?

  • Notification of pending profile pictures for Admins
  • Notification of error in Grade Passback Sync
  • Missing assignment email message or notification to student
  • Discussion Notification: Activity that involves you
  • Automatic Notification for changes in course enrollment status