I can certainly understand and appreciate the garden/gardening analogy, as it is certainly appropriate for software development and evolution, as well as many other things in life. I certainly would not like to use or support software that becomes bloatware, where the core ages poorly with oh too many bolt-on shiny rhinestones.  For me, I certainly hope that the team at Instructure can focus on the intrinsic functionality that we fell in love with and have come to appreciate over the years.  A garden is useless unless you have quality soil, watering infrastructure, shovel, trowel, hoe, and so on. Make the core tools amazingly functional, beat out any remaining bugs or deficiencies, and tastefully grow the functionality.  Avoid acquiring companies that have no hope of adding value. Teachers, faculty, support staff, and to some extent students all appreciate predictability and consistency.  They all expect that there will be change, but are not ready to switch overnight to hydroponic gardening. Thank you Shaun, for being a voice of reason and adding soul to the products. ... View more

@jsailor I would like to, along with many of my colleagues, offer my appreciation in your group's decision to place the Ungraded as Zero feature behind a flag.  This option will allow all of us in the UC Davis teaching and learning community to keep rolling along without undue chaos. ... View more

Forgive my cynicism here, but when I hear, "...the feedback that we receive from various outlets, including the many conversations that we have with the educators using Canvas on a daily basis." I wonder just who @jsailor and other product managers that are focused on the treat ungraded as zero feature are talking to.  It is certainly not me nor any of my faculty.  Has anyone else in this thread had somebody from Instructure reach out to have a conversation about treat ungraded as zero? ... View more

@chriscas  Thank you for presenting the situation so beautifully.  At UC Davis we completely share your sentiments about how we are all trying to make these comments constructive and how they are largely being ignored by Instructure because "the railroad must go through here regardless of the collateral damage".  I am not looking forward to a feature being enabled in a manner which clearly is not welcome by most admins or large institutional Instructure customers. -Steve Faith, Canvas admin and Service Lead ... View more

View Ungraded as Zero is a feature that will generate a GREAT deal of confusion with our instructors and generates a lot of churn and support tickets when it comes time for final grade submission.  Please reconsider this feature or <preferably> turn this into a feature flag so we can decide school-by-school/institution-by-institution whether this would be valuable for our community of users. ... View more

MathJax is immensely important as an accessibility tool for some of our students.  It would be nice to know in which tools it is functional and in which tools it is not so that we can communicate and set expectations with our instructors.  The only way we know this is to thoroughly test for MathJax in every instance of RCE availability after each deploy.  I am hoping that Instructure sees this testing/QA as a responsibility that should housed within the Instructure organization and not the responsibility of the educational institution or the end users. Thank you @erinhmcmillan for letting us know about the lack of MathJax support in Quizzes (assuming both Classic and New quizzes). ... View more

Matt, please go back and re-read your first paragraph above.  You are implying that admins, instructional designers, and course coordinators do not care about "modifying user behavior" and that is why Confetti does not resonate with them.  I think that you might want to get more familiar with the admins, instructional designers, and course coordinators at many of the Higher Ed accounts that are using Canvas, as you will find that for the most part, they are *VERY* interested in improving education, instructor development, and making classrooms better learning places. Best, -Steve Faith ... View more

Thank you Christi and Erin.  I appreciate you sharing the reasoning behind the changes.  So does this mean that when I "favorite" a resource in Commons, other people can also see that the item has been "favorited" and thus becomes an indicator of value on that resource for the community at large? ... View more

Perhaps I am confused about the Commons LTI changes.  To me, it seems that the new "Favorite" is not a replacement for the 5-star rating system.  If I am favorite-ing a resource, that will only appear to me for purposes of finding those items at a later time/date.  The 5-star system was the only way I am aware of for winnowing the grain from the chaff (i.e. figuring out the quality material from the garbage).  If this a fundamental change or am I missing something? ... View more