Introducing Differentiation Tags: Personalizing Learning in Canvas

[SamGarza1]

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Meeting the diverse needs of students can be challenging. That’s why we’re excited to introduce Differentiation Tags, a new feature designed to simplify personalized learning. With these tags, you can easily label students or groups based on learning needs, styles, or interests—then use the "Assign To" feature to deliver targeted resources, assignments, and activities effortlessly.

Why Differentiation Tags?

Educators told us that managing differentiated instruction is time-consuming. Our research confirmed the need for a seamless way to identify student needs and assign relevant content. Differentiation Tags make this process intuitive and efficient, ensuring every student gets the right level of support or challenge.

How It Works:

• Create & Apply Tags (e.g., "Needs Extra Support - Math," "Visual Learner," "Interested in Robotics").
  
  
• Assign Targeted Content using the "Assign To" feature—only students with the selected tag receive the resource.
  
  
• Example: Tag students who need extra help with fractions and assign them foundational exercises, while advanced learners get enrichment activities.
  
  

Thanks for joining our early adopter program for Differentiation Tags. By participating, you'll help shape Differentiation Tags to ensure they meet real classroom needs.

- The Canvas Engage Team

[NikkiF]

I'm absolutely LOVING the differentiation tags - thank you! I'm eagerly await the CSV upload option now. Another feature I'd love to see is the ability to filter the People view based on a tag

[SamGarza1]

Hi @NikkiF Glad that you're loving the feature! And good news, both those improvements will be in the August 13th deploy.

[KatieBiehl]

Hi. I'm not seeing this as an option in my Canvas iteration. How do I add these tags? 

[coffeyd]

"With these tags, you can easily label students or groups based on learning needs, styles, or interests—then use the "Assign To" feature to deliver targeted resources, assignments, and activities effortlessly."

The ability to assign groups in the assign to feature is not functionality that is available, you can only assign to sections or individual students.  And this feature does not appear to work with sections.  So how is this supposed to work?

[JamesMacaulay]

Feature request 1: As a teacher, I want the differentiation tags to copy as part of a course copy and retain the content Assign To with the tags in the new course, so that I can keep the course content mapping and just connect up the new cohort of students.

Feature request 2: As a teacher, I want to filter People by section, so that I can bulk assign differentiation tags based on the enrolment section.

Feature request 3: As a teacher, I want Test Student to preview based on having a particular differentiation tag, so that I can check what content is available to students with a specific differentiation tag applied.

[Tasha_Biesinger]

Is there supposed to be a downloadable Differentiation Tag template in the Canvas UI? Based on the following text from the UI, it sounds like there should be (bolding the text was done by me):

"You can create tags by downloading the differentiation tag template, editing the file in a spreadsheet editor (like Excel or Google Sheets) and then uploading your edited file."

[olsons1]

So excited to share this feature with my staff.