Community

UPDATE: Got really excited when the Rich Content Editor was added to New Quizzes in December. But then it got sucked back in early January. You're killin' me, Smalls!!! ... View more

THIS. The inability to record audio from within the question/answer RCE is a dealbreaking roadblock in my team's efforts to persuade some teachers to transition to the New Quizzes. If this is not available by the sunset date*, it's going to be a great loss to our struggling readers, students on IEPs, ELs, etc. (*Edit: the feature comparison tool does have this functionality listed as a "by transition" item. But according to the sunsetting timeline, we're less than a year out from being unable to create anymore Classic quizzes) This is such an obvious accessibility issue that I am surprised Canvas has not put it on a front burner, considering Instructure's emphasis on having Canvas be the top LMS for accessibility. Screen Readers have been suggested, but frankly, even a high quality embedded screen reader would be only a barely adequate substitute for struggling students hearing the spoken word in their teacher's voice. File uploads for audio and video has also been discussed, but the current New Quizzes file upload process is much too clunky and labor intensive for it to be a workable alternative. Perhaps if the Pandora's box had not been already opened with Classic Quizzes, this wouldn't be such a painful issue for our teachers and students. But the tool has been provided for many years now, and the prospect of sucking it back is a pretty awful one. We desperately need this functionality to be continued prior to the sunset date. ... View more

Hi, I just now found this thread and am wondering if there has been a resolution to this problem. If not, I need to warn our staff about this. Thanks much! ... View more

Hi - I have a followup question. Why are these adjustments a feature option and not just updates to Canvas? What are the potential downside(s) to turning on these adjustments? ... View more

Thanks for trying to help. But this would be a workaround, not an option, and as a workaround it would just be too cumbersome and limited. Instructure just needs to make the Moderation option happen. The fact that it hasn't is another case where K-12 needs get put on a back burner because we just don't have the numbers or as loud of a voice as Higher Ed. ... View more

cholling‌  @James ‌ ...and other people in this discussion outside of the K-12 realm: I appreciate your perspective on this topic, but I think I need to provide another piece of the context puzzle, illustrating why the moderation choice feature is a desperately needed feature in the K-12 public school world. For students with mental illness or behavioral disabilities, this option would be an invaluable accommodation tool for the teacher to utilize. If a student is on an IEP or 504 plan for behavioral and/or psychological issues, teachers actually may be forbidden to block or excuse them from participating in a discussion that the rest of the class is having. Preventing them from having the opportunity to participate in an online discussion could be construed as a violation of their rights to equal education under the law. As a case in point, we had an elementary student who submitted something inappropriate more than once to discussions that the rest of the class saw before the teacher got to it. Needless to say, there were repercussions for the teacher as well as for the student. However, the school was not permitted to exclude the student from the next discussion as a consequence, as they were on a 504 plan for behavioral problems and the parent objected. The courts are clearly on Kirk's side in the Spock-Kirk debate re: the needs of the many versus the needs of the few (or the one)...so arguing about it with an objecting parent is pointless. Therefore, a teacher in this type of situation is faced with the options of: (1) taking the risk that the student will do it again despite an after-the-fact intervention by teachers, administrators, and parents (and they do often repeat the behavior; they're on a special behavioral plan for good reason), thus disturbing/upsetting other students and parents before the teacher has a chance to intervene, then having to deal with the behavior after the fact with the student, as well as the subsequent fallout from other students, parents and administration; (2) sitting with the Discussion open and refreshing the page constantly the entire time it's available, hoping to catch the problem before someone else sees it; or (3) dropping the use of Discussions as too much of a risk. Which option would you choose? And what a shame, because Discussions is an AMAZING instructional tool. That is why we are BEGGING to have the option to moderate discussion posts, as teachers could confidently utilize the tool with the class and still be able to intervene, reteach, and give a student another opportunity to post correctly and assure they are receiving their "free appropriate education in the least restrictive environment possible." Canvas does such a good job with providing accommodations for our students with disabilities. A moderation option for Discussions would be a game-changer for teachers and their students with behavioral/psychological disabilities. ... View more

Adam, I just spent the last hour trying to find documentation about what I now know is a temporarily disabled feature. Finally I stumbled on this Q&A. Have I not been looking in the right place, did I miss an email, or has this not yet been widely publicized? ... View more

Hi, we're not in Michigan but we're from that state that UM people are unhappy with on a yearly basis   We have been using the Canvas-Powerschool sync since its inception in 2015. If you'd like to hear about our experiences, please feel free to message me and we'll figure out a way to connect. - Deb ... View more

The other side of the coin...because I have an annoyingly overdeveloped sense of fairness... To be fair, in my experience, Canvas is more responsive to users' input and needs than 90% of the software companies out there. I work with several companies and only one of the others is actively seeking ideas and input, and then acting upon at least some of them. And that other company is several magnitudes smaller in scale and scope than Canvas is. As someone who's been very active in the Community for 5 years, I've had opportunities to converse with Canvas VP's and engineers. I have seen that ideas this popular with users are generally taken quite seriously. But at times (from what I understand because I'm not a software expert) there's something deep within Canvas' architecture that makes changing the code to accommodate the asked-for tool or process very difficult if not impossible. An example would be the Notifications tool, and the fact that it can't be set to specific courses or roles. The code for that tool apparently is not possible to be altered in that way, no matter how much people may want it.  So I'm wondering if this is another one of those situations. If so, I think it would be helpful if Canvas were to come out and honestly say "As much as we want to, this just can't be done with our current software architecture. But as the architecture changes, we will keep this on the list of priorities." However, if architecture is not the issue...this pinch point has been, and continues to be, impacting every user who creates content on Canvas. So it is MHO that it should not be shunted aside for another year. It made #7 on the list of priorities for Khaki 2017, which means it should have been implemented by the end of 2018. Hmmm. ... View more

David, how did you learn that it just works from web sources? I too have had some success with copy/pasting but it was not consistent and I had not yet attempted to ascertain what makes it work versus not work. C'mon Canvas, throw us a bone! :smileycry: ... View more

Hi Chad, Just checking in to see if you had found a way to print Quizzes.Next. Asking for a friend   . Thanks! ... View more

I'll start! One of the teachers in our district has been making video lessons with colorful, engaging and interactive worksheets using hot spot, categorization and ordering questions. ... View more

Yes! This lack of easy access to rubrics is one of many issues that are severely undermining our efforts to get our teachers to use Cloud Assignments.  @GregoryBeyrer   Another aspect of this rubric problem is one that a teacher in our district just had today. He had attached a rubric to a Cloud assignment but forgot at the time to check the "Use this rubric for assignment grading" checkbox. He realized his mistake after students had submitted assignments and he went into speedgrader to grade them. Now there is no way to go back and edit the rubric settings, so he is stuck with a plug-and-chug task of manually adding up and entering scores in his gradebook. ... View more

Hear, hear Gregory! I had submitted a feature request about this just a year ago: Add "Submission Details" Link to Google Cloud Assignment - but it got no traction and is currently in Cold Storage.  ... View more