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.

[creitan]

Sorry to hear this idea has been moved to "Cold Storage". 

[RobDitto]

 @creitan ‌, this idea seems to be accepting votes again.

[Renee_Carney]

Hi  @creitan  

Rob is correct.  This idea has never been moved to cold storage.  Please take a look through the https://community.canvaslms.com/community/ideas/blog/2018/09/04/adaptation-feature-idea-process-chan...  blog post.  We removed an extra stage in our ideas process and this idea remains open to collect votes!

[hensonlm]

I teach both Spanish and linguistics and would like to have a character integration option. One thing I don't believe I've seen mentioned here is the issue of proctored assignments.  We used Respondus LockDown and Monitor (which had a character map), but now use Proctorio to proctor exams and compositions. In Proctorio, we often elect to disable copy/paste or going to other websites for academic integrity purposes.  And certain keystrokes to switch to the international keyboard in Windows bump students out of the exam.  Having a feature like this IN Canvas would help us avoid these issues with our proctoring options. 

[creitan]

Renee, 

I agree that native speakers of other languages may not use the tool. But that is not the point! We need the tool for language learners! Math teachers may not use the math tool either, but students need it. The same with the special character tool. Personally, on a windows machine I use the ALT commands, as I've memorized them over the years. On a Mac, I use the option key, but students do not use accents when it is not easy to do so. They continue to ignore the accents in beginning courses. Those are spelling mistakes. After a few semesters, students do learn other ways of including the accents. But, in the California community colleges, ALL of which have adopted Canvas, most of us teach courses at the first and second year levels only. Those beginning students need the special character tool.

I think as a tool for students, leaving out the special character tool is an affront to language learners. I think it is wrong to just listen to the native speakers who are not language teachers. It's time to listen to the language teachers, native speakers and others, to learn how students of languages behave. 

[dlyons]

The Math editor hopefully is used by teachers as well as their students. There are not built-in operating system supported ways to enter the full range of mathematical formulas that displays properly for sighted and screen-reader users like there is for all UTF-8 characters, so a Math Editor is still a necessary feature.

I don't think anyone is debating that students need to be able to enter the characters specific to the language they're learning. Rather, that recreating basic operating system functionality (entering text) inside a specific application, the LMS in this case, isn't ideal. None of my student have ever done 100% of their writing in the LMS; they use Word and Google Docs and I can only imagine what else. If they only understand the character map button in the LMS they can't write in their target language very easily anywhere else. But if they understand how to enter text on their computing device generally, a skill they only have to learn once, they can write in their target language anywhere!

On Windows and macOS the character map can be brought up at any time and used in any application or website. This was not always the case, and that is exactly why every application and website had its own special character button. Happily those days are behind us, and text entry on every major operating system is now truly global and not assumed to be English first.

[Beth_Young]

"recreating basic operating system functionality (entering text) inside a specific application, the LMS in this case, isn't ideal."

Speaking as someone who teaches students to use the character map, I can tell you that it isn't ideal either. My students often need special characters on quizzes, and they don't compose those answers in Word or Google Docs first, nor should they (too cumbersome for short answer questions). It can be quite difficult to find the characters you need on the character map. 

This doesn't mean that the solution proposed here is the best of all possible solutions. But it does mean that the problem is not solved by the existence of the character map.

[dlyons]

I apologize, but I'm not sure if I understand your reply.

The character map on Windows/macOS is a stand alone part of the operating system that can be used anywhere to input characters, including quizzes. Students wouldn't have to, and I agree they shouldn't, type their answers in Word/Google Docs first. They can type directly into Canvas, and use the character map (or keyboard shortcuts) as they would if they were inputing text anywhere that required special characters.

[ejp10]

On a technical level, what you say is correct. But usability does matter and unfortunately (IMO) entering non-ASCII range characters in U.S. Windows and some other platforms is much more complicated than it needs to be. I've seen this comment from multiple instructors in this thread who all indicate the complexity interferes with learning basic language writing skills.

This lack of usability is the reason that other LMS/WYSIWYG editing systems DO include character entry panels - which means there is code out there that could be utilized. And lots of web developers like Branah.com (https://www.branah.com/spanish) DO have online utilities that let users enter in different characters more easily. It would be easy to restrict assignments to Canvas. Or just as likely, the student could use a simplified Canvas palette to copy and paste characters into Word.

If everyone was on a Mac, I would agree that a special tool wouldn't be needed because typing accents involves using an extra key in easy to remember combinations. Asking first-level students to remember random numeric ALT keys or activate a custom keyboard utility in the settings or find 10 characters in a sea of thousands of characters on a Character Map is daunting. 

For other operating systems, a palette with a reduced character set could be helpful, especially in the beginning. Should students in advanced classes learn the other methods? Of course. But by then students will probably more committed to working on a best solution for their operating system.

[cmilan]

Why are we still debating the usefulness of this feature after all these years? It´s frustrating for us and for our students. As Ana Diaz pointed out, it's ironic that there are objections to the special character tool for "cluttering" the panel, while we have a Tweeter button in place. Maybe if we had this feature, the word "espanol" in the pull-down menu of the Guides tab would be spelled correctly.

[Stef_retired]

 @cmilan ‌, your screenshot is of the third-party platform used by the Canvas Community, which is different from the Canvas learning platform. Thank you for calling attention to the missing tilde over the n in Español; we have made the necessary corrections to our menus on this platform.

[cmilan]

Thank you, Stefanie, I appreciate it.

Cecilia

Cecilia Milán

Professor of Spanish

Oxnard College

[creitan]

  

[creitan]

That is a good first step. But now our students need to be able to easily access these diacritical marks so they can learn to spell correctly.

[thompsli]

I just wanted to let others know something that I only recently noticed. In Windows 10, you can get to an "Emoji" menu by either right-clicking and choosing "Emoji" or using the key combination [windows key] and [.] (hold down the windows key like you would the shift key). This appears to work any place that's expecting a keyboard input.

In addition to giving me many wonderful options to add colorful tackiness to things in the form of emoji, it also has accented characters if you click on Ω for symbols and then subcategory Ç in the resulting pop up menu. (Recently-used ones will show up in the "recent" menu as well, so students who always need the same few will eventually not have to dig too far for them.) It took me a while to notice this because I didn't think of, say, the degrees symbol as a form of emoji so it's weird that they decided to label this feature that way rather than something like "browse special characters", but I guess I'm just old.

This will probably be easier for students to deal with that memorizing ALT codes since it's a GUI-browsing-based option. I have no idea if it works with test-lockdown software - it's native to Windows, so maybe? We don't use a special testing browser here (I use proctored paper tests instead because it's much simpler to deal with proctoring those in our set-up) so I can't test that.

I also have no idea if there's anything similarly simple on Chromebooks, which a lot of our students use. 

[michelle_steven]

I agree this is a very needed addition. For those of you that have access to DesignPLUS by Cidi_Labs, there is a language accents tool that can be used for content creation and by students in responses and quizzes. You have to go into the settings to turn this on. Scroll down to the bottom of the tool settings to find it.

Once turned on, it will show up at the bottom of your toolbox.

These are the languages currently available but we are open to adding more based on need.

I hope that helps. If you have access to DesignPLUS and have any questions on using the Language Accents Characters, please send us a support ticket and I'd be happy to help.

[creitan]

Canvas keeps refusing to add a special character tool. It is because they cannot tell the difference between a second language user and a second language learner. It is true that a native speaker will already know how to create these characters in their operating system. However, language learners are asked to do a lot of things right away! Their teachers may be teaching them class vocabulary in the target language, they are learning a new grammar, they may be new to Canvas,  and on top of that they have to learn more computer stuff? It is not fair! Many students will just drop out. Instructure needs to learn the difference between a language user and a language learner. Or else they just need to say that Canvas is only good for native speakers and for intermediate to advanced language learners and let people know that elementary language classes should not use Canvas. 

[sschackmann]

Yes! As mentioned by other commenters previously, many students are just not willing to change their entire keyboard layout for one class even if it is just a toggle between keyboards.

My issue arises during written portions of online exams. I use the Lockdown Browser with Respondus Monitor. I don't want students to access outside websites just to be able to copy and paste special characters. Language courses need the feature that you've described.

I only speak for myself here, but I provide linked information to students in all my courses (online, synchronous/asynchronous, traditional, etc.) every semester and it's ALWAYS a hassle. Some don't want to use the alt+130 style codes, others can never seem to understand the simplicity of special characters on a Mac, and don't even get me started on students with Chromebooks!

I just hope the feature will be added in the near future.

[jjheaney]

We are (due to the pandemic) shoving our entire Philosophy curriculum online. Typing out logical proofs is hard. Typing out logical proofs without special characters is impossible. We're trying to figure out non-Canvas workarounds for this, but that's a bummer for us, because we're a Canvas school -- and, long run, it could be a bummer for Canvas, if we find a workaround we like a whole lot!

[dlyons]

I'm not an expert in all of the symbols needed for philosophical/logical arguments but from my Googling I couldn't find any that aren't already covered by the Math editor in Canvas. To my untrained eye it looks like logical and mathematical proofs use the same notation. Take a look and see if it might work for you? (All these symbols are also accessible through the other OS level means I mentioned above too.)

How do I use the Math Editor in the Rich Content Editor as an instructor?  

https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-26316-how-do-i-use-the-math-editor-in-the-new-rich-content-...