Special language character panel/chart integration for Rich Content Editor

[taylor_puentes]

Faculty at our institution would like the integration of a special language character panel or chart into the Rich Content Editor. They feel it would be easier for students than the current methods of typing or copy/pasting special characters into their assignments and discussions. They feel it would also be easier for teachers of language courses to give feedback if special characters were more easily accessible in that way.

[jonathan_carlyo]

Thank you for placing this idea on Product Radar. This will make a huge difference for teachers of non-English languages, literatures and cultures. If I can be of any assistance, please let me know.

[cmilan]

I teach Spanish and I find it very inconvenient to have students go in and out of Canvas to insert special characters. I've noticed that students use fewer, if any, accent marks and opening interrogation marks when they write a discussion in Canvas. Please incorporate the special character panel to allow for correct spelling in languages other than English.

Thank you.

[creitan]

I totally agree with Cecilia. Language learners are struggling with new vocabulary, new grammar structures, a new language. Those who already speak a language know how to use the OS to make diacritical marks. But, language learners are struggling with enough! We NEED a special character tool in Canvas!  We need to make it easier to learn languages, not harder. Come on, Canvas. Make it easier to create global citizens! If you need to remove a tool from the toolbar, how about emoticons? 

[creitan]

The special character tool is especially useful for new language learners. They have plenty to deal with and having a computer issue be a barrier is not advantageous to learning. A language learner does not necessarily have experience setting up another keyboard. At the beginning level, the lack of a special character tool results in students leaving out the accents and other diacritical marks. This is a spelling mistake! Their learning is impeded. 

[vegan]

I can't believe we have to debate whether this is a good idea or not. We are requesting that non-English characters have a presence in a LMS that has been essentially imposed on the community colleges! We have to turn it into a popularity contest in order for Canvas to make it into a legitimate request. Talking about Anglocentrism!

The Canvas site should have a format similar to that of the Supersite of VISTAS language textbooks. It shouldn't take more than one click to insert a special character, and it certainly shouldn't have to take any cutting or pasting from another tab in order to accurately spell a word.   

[Renee_Carney]

 @vegan 

Thank you for joining in the conversation here.  I'm sorry that you see this as a debate.  That is not the intention of the feature idea process, at all.  Nor is it intended to be a popularity contest.  Our community is a place for people who share a common goal (Education), with a common tool (Canvas), to come together for support, discussion, innovation, and whatever else inspires them!  The feature idea process is an piece of that Community.  

We say this a lot, but it is always worth repeating, voting and the total vote-count on a feature idea do not guarantee the idea will be built.  The feature idea process is but one channel of input that Product takes into consideration during their prioritization activities.  As a community, we are able to present detailed information on ideas that have gathered many votes, but we also look at the demographic data behind those votes, as well as other activity markers in the community (comments, likes).  Votes are a great way to gauge priority from a large group of people, but they are not the only metric we look at!  

I do want to address your statement of 'Anglocentrism'.  I'm sorry you feel that way, but after reading the thread above, I think you are completely mistaken.  When I read the comments of many Canvas users that I know are bi-lingual, or English is not their primary language, I see that they would not actually use this tool.  In fact, they state it would slow them down if they used it.  This relates to the 'other metrics' that I referenced above.  When we look at the demographic data of this idea, the comments clearly point to a need for beginning language learners that are not fluent in their 2nd language keyboarding skills, and primarily at the higher education level.  

I personally believe that this would be a useful tool for language learners.  I know I probably would have used a tool like this in my Spanish classes, but I also could have benefited from my early Spanish instructors teaching me the keyboard shortcuts from the very beginning - I sincerely wish I had known these existed!

Resources Shared by  @dlyons ‌
Using-us-int-l-keyboard-layout-to-type-accented-characters 
OS X Yosemite: Use input sources to type in other languages 

I am sincerely sorry that you reached a point of frustration, but I'm glad you found our Community.  While this tool might not be in the queue for immediate development, it is something that our Product team is aware of (along with so many other great ideas).

I do see that you are new to our community, so  @vegan  Welcome ‌.  We really do look forward to having great conversations, and growing together in here!  There are a couple resources that may help explain this process further, if you're interested

• What is the feature development process for Canvas? 
• How does the feature idea process work? 
• And just for fun.  https://community.canvaslms.com/community/ideas/blog/2017/04/22/khaki-2017 talks about a prioritization activity that some of our Community friends helped us with!

[myanalunas]

A wonderful response Renee - thank you for taking the time to compose it.

Meg

[Renee_Carney]

I was also exploring Chrome extensions this morning, and found these 2 that look interesting.  I've installed them to play with them, so I don't have an opinion yet...

• Special Characters - Click and Paste - Chrome Web Store 
• Spanish Characters - Chrome Web Store 

[harmons]

Thank you, Renee, for that thorough response, but I strongly disagree that a browser extension would suffice. In fact, it does hamper non-English instruction. What is more, it presumes that students are using their own computers at all times when using Canvas--this is simply not the case, and it is a mentality that needs to change. As many of us have described, the number of students who are using public computers (be it in a computer lab or a laptop/tablet cart in the classroom) to do their work is still very high, and until the digital divide is eliminated, it is unwise to presume that students have access to add or change elements to their computers. This would also include the ability to change keyboard inputs; again, most students at community colleges and high schools do not have this luxury, as they are not using their own computers. The same was true for the science and math courses that needed a function on the RCE toolbar to inset special functions, and Instructure listened to those requests; those of us who teach foreign language need this same function, and we need Instructure to listen to us now. There isn't a reason to not have it on, other than to keep those of us who teach foreign languages at a disadvantage.

What is more, even when we teach students the keyboard functions, like those you listed below, they do not use them, as it is seen as a barrier to most students--it is 'elite computing knowledge', which is true. While it may seem like 'basic keyboarding knowledge' to those in the tech community, it is in fact not the case. There is nothing basic about keyboarding in a foreign language, which is the target group that we are trying to reach with such a function on the toolbar. In your fact-finding, which demographics did you use? 

As many of us on here have mentioned, it is quite simple to add this function onto the RCE toolbar, as most every LMS has done it already and it is a fairly easy tool to add. What is more, it is part of the curriculum for those of us who teach foreign language to ensure that our students are able to type/write in that language, and any tool that enables them to do so in their browser with ease is essential to their learning experience. Not having this function, and an insistence that it is not necessary, is Anglo-centric, or at the very least English-language-centric. Just as it was incomprehensible for Canvas not to (originally) have a science and math formula function--something that you eventually changed--it is equally incomprehensible for a LMS that is used in high schools and colleges around the world to not have a function to insert any character that has a diacritic associated with it. 

Therefore, it is with these actual experiences, as experienced educators at various institutions across the country, that we are asking for this. To discredit our numerous examples, let alone the experiences that the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages reports on, is misinformed at best. 

[dlyons]

There seems to be some misunderstanding about how the modern web and web applications, Canvas included, handle character input. Canvas uses UTF-8 encoding, which means it displays any character in the UTF-8 set. Up to 1,112,064 of them! Here's a list if you're the curious type.

What makes UTF-8 the encoding franca of the web is that unlike ASCII with it's paltry 128 characters, UTF-8 contains characters for virtually every language (plus emoji and other stuff.) So in reality Canvas is only as "English-centric" as it is "Korean-centric" or "Emoji-centric" since it treats all of those characters equally. The difference is input method.

The typical physical keyboard westerner's think of is the ANSI layout, but there are other layouts like ISO in Europe where accented characters are common, and the JIS lay.... For anyone with an ANSI layout keyboard, learning to make accented characters like á é í ó ú etc. is no more complicated than COPY/PASTE with the keyboard on Windows and macOS (here's some common ones for example; note the clever repetitive design of the shortcuts). On iOS and Android it's even easier since you just hold the letter down and it shows you all the accent options.

As most people don't exclusively enter text into Canvas (but also documents, email, text messages, tweets, etc.) it is crucial to their language learning/teaching that they be able to type these characters anywhere as predictably as they might type a capital letter (which does, after all, require a key combination that we all had to learn at one point.   )

[ryan_corris]

I found this post while trying to help one of the Spanish teachers in one of the schools where I work.  I did some exploring and found some interesting things. After a few discoveries, I totally agree with  @dlyons ‌.  There is a lot to think about here. Do you want your students to only have the experience in Canvas, or are you looking for an immersive situation that all of your various language students can experience.  I came to the realization that even though I can add different virtual keyboards on my computer, there are also physical keyboards that match those languages as well.  If I do not attach the correct physical keyboard to my computer, my experience as a language learner could be confusing as well.  While I agree it would be nice to see something in Canvas that would assist with this, I am not sure if that is the best route.  What happens when your students step outside of Canvas to do things.  I do not want to assume things, but I am curious to know how many people have actually contacted their technology departments at their institutions and have discussed these issues with them.  Instructure cannot fix every experience our students have, so maybe our institutions need to step up and make sure virtual and physical keyboards are available in our labs and other district devices to accomodate different language learners.  I don't feel there is necessarily a right or wrong answer here. If Canvas has one way of doing things, Microsoft and Google have another way of doing things, and other websites and apps have even different ways of doing things isn't this going to be even more frustrating for our students?  If our institutions can narrow it down to figure out what can be done for students at our universities and school districts, our students will at least have the same experiences through the institutions they  attend. 

As far as incorporating a math and science portion to the RCE, correct me if I am wrong but doesn't math in every country use the same symbols?  When looking at different languages for accents and special charaters, how would you decide what languages to exclude?  Some languages are not as well used as others, but what happens if you have students that speak one of those languages and it has been excluded?  Are you just going to deal with the languages that your institution teaches, or are you going to make the focus on languages that affect all of your students.

So many people have made the comment that it should be easy to include something like this in Canvas, but there truly is quite a bit to think about for implementation.

[ana_diaz]

I have taught online using multiple LMS including: 

PEAK/AVENTA (used at K12/FuelEd)
OHS (used at Middlebury Interactive and K12/FuelEd)
PGLMS (used at Middlebury Interactive and K12)
D2L – Desire to Learn (Gwinnett County) 

and Canvas is the first LMS that does not offer an insert symbol or a special character floating keyboard option. 

In reference to the "cluttering" of the buttons and rich text editing options, I find it interesting that a Twitter button made the cut, but an insert symbol option, which is used by all foreign languages and math, is considered "extra". 

Regarding whether an LMS should provide this feature rather than students learning to work around it in other ways, I believe that is good but not necessarily realistic. First, students are lazy. Heck, I am lazy. I want technology to be user-friendly and not require 500 clicks to do a simple task. And students will use this as an excuse to not do an assingnment or to never use the required symbols. Second, at the rate our technology is developing to meet these needs, as well as the increasingly linguistically diverse population in the U.S. and elsewhere, I am sure that very soon all programs will offer multiple foreign language features that enable users to quickly and easily switch back and forth between multiple languages. The need to be able to work around this particular issue is nearly obselete now, and will soon be a nonsequeter.

In conclusion, Canvas is showing a real lack of insight by excluding this feature. 

[creitan]

Students are able to use special character tools in Word, on their phones, but not in Canvas (unless they are on their phones).  It is also pretty easy to do on a Mac. But on a Windows machine, not so much, unless there is a tool in the application one is using. As students become more and more familiar with the language they are studying, they will probably begin to use the key commands in their Windows machine (ALT+a 4-digit number), but when they are at the beginning of the learning curve, it is a big thing to ask from them. They are seeing diacritical marks for the first time, learning  how they work in this new language, and having to learn how to create them on a computer.  Canvas would help students who are beginning language students by including the special character tool. Teachers of Asian languages already incorporate and spend time teaching students to create the various characters they need, but often use special software (the example NJStar comes to mind for Chinese). But for teachers of Spanish, French, German, not so much. A special character tool will help students at the start of their language study. 

[creitan]

I've been following this debate for quite some time. It would be interesting to see how many of those who dislike the idea of a special character tool in the RCE are speakers of languages (other than English)  that teach in discipline unrelated to language teachiing - and how many are teachers of languages other than English. Teachers of elementary levels of language NEED the special character tool. We need an easy way for them to spell correctly. Because Canvas is so English-centric, I do  provide a link to typeit.org so students can easily copy and paste the special letters. On a Windows machine, students need to learn a 4-character code to type in one letter. For me it's easy. I do it all the time. But for them, not so much. Canvas is a teaching tool. Help us teach! When students get beyond the first couple of semesters, they will learn to use the OS for this purpose. And how about instructors who don't speak a language other than English, but need to spell a student's name correctly when the student's name has a special character. 

[djg25]

It appears that the special character pallet for foreign languages has been up for discussion for quite some time now and that there had been a decision not to move forward with adding this to Canvas.  This is extremely disappointing and frustrating.  I teach basic language at a campus where many (most) of the students are not technologically savvy and/or are non-traditional age students without a lot of computer knowledge.  Therefore, changing keyboards, etc. is not something that they can easily do.  They are frustrated enough with having to learn a foreign language (which they don't understand why they should have to do it!) and a pallet with the special characters needed at least relieves a bit of the stress.  

Unfortunately, because Canvas doesn't have this feature has caused me to NOT use Canvas to its full capacity, to use an LMS from a book publisher instead, and to create my own web pages where I have included the pallet for my students to be able to just click on to get what they need. 

It would be wonderful if the idea of a special character button was revisited. 

Just my two cents. 

[creitan]

@Deborah Gill makes a very good point. Most of the California Community Colleges are using Canvas. We teach the first two years of language classes. Students are beginners. At first they do not get why they need to use the special characters anyway. For languages such as Russian, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, with different alphabets or characters, students get it. They know they will need to learn a new system. We're not asking for Canvas to come complete with all of that, just the small special character pallet for languages that use the same alphabet but with additional accented characters. Students leave them out in Canvas. That is why when I use Canvas as a supplement to a face to face class or when I teach a hybrid class, students must turn in the assignments on paper - so that I can reasonably expect them to include the accents and then I can take off points for the spelling mistake - which is what it is. I do provide a copy-and-paste alternative for them, but I don't see many of them using it. Paper works better because Canvas does not provide the special characters. For fully online language classes, Canvas offers a lot of functionality, but not the special characters. I see why @Deborah Gill is using the publisher platform instead. To Canvas, it's a little thing that we can live without. For some language teachers, it's the make or break item. For those of you who are not language teachers, imagine that Canvas provided the alphabet except for the letter "a". It would be inconvenient to have to copy and paste "a" every time we needed it, wouldn't it? And students would tend to leave it out. Or rther, "Nd students would tend to leve it out." 

[creitan]

Hi David,

I think the misunderstanding is more about language instruction. Our beginning students aren't doing much out of Canvas in the target language - the language they are learning. As they progress, by the time they finish the first year, they will be venturing out on their own. And if they are doing projects or other things that motivate them, they will be motivated to learn the ALT commands (if on a windows machine - much easier on macs), etc to make the characters. Using a different keyboard may work for some, but even those who are fluent in a language other than English may not use a different keyboard as the letters are in a different configuration on the keyboard and for some of us, using the keyboard we learned to type on is more efficient. We teach students to make the accents in different ways, but when they are posting to a discussion in Canvas, or typing in the RCE, convenience of a special character tool will make the writing of beginning students more accurate. 

[ejp10]

Accented letters aren't just for foreign language classes. English words with accented letters occur in almost every discipline, particularly the humanities. As students take more advanced courses, the more accented spellings are going to be expected.

Appendix:English words with diacritics - Wiktionary 

[creitan]

Yes, and what if your student's names have special characters in them? When you address them in class would you mispronounce them on purpose? No. In a fully online class, it would be really nice to be able to respond to or refer to their posts and use the accented letters for José and Verónica. There's the result from copying and pasting from typeit.org (not a Spanish speaker, so didn't know the key command for ó.) Some might say an "equity issue"?

[Renee_Carney]

The Radar idea stage has been removed from the Feature Idea Process.  You can read more about why in the blog post Adaptation: Feature Idea Process Changes.

This change will only impact the stage sort of this idea and will not change how it is voted on or how it is considered during prioritization activities.  This change will streamline the list of ideas 'open for voting', making it easier for you to see the true top voted ideas in one sort, here.