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I really don't understand why anybody would want to take away teacher agency, but I guess James and Chris don't like teachers making their own decisions.   Considering that Canvas allows teacher to change the font anyway, I really don't understand why teachers picking their own preference is an issue. ... View more

I gotta be honest James, reaching out to my ITF to have them edit my course on their end sounds like more of a hassle then Canvas improving their system for thousands of teachers all at once. Furthermore, font with serifs helps students read and retain information, and Lato (not Arial) is boring and not as effective or aesthetically pleasing as other more-desirable fonts. The simple fact is that, teachers design their own courses, so they should be able to pick what font they want to adopt as their standard. You can pick Lato, I will pick Georgia, while elementary teachers might pick "Architect's Daughter" or "Comic Sans MS." All I know is that the current system is annoying because I have to constantly reformat my assignments. Yes, I know I can design a template (I have); I would much rather be able to pick my own font anyway. Lastly, I do not care about "licensing," "good support for glyphs" or "international characters." If these things are not offered in Georgia and I happen to need them, then I will manually switch to the more-boring Lato as needed. It is not wise to prevent improvement because what we have works for us because it might not work for everyone else. ... View more

The baseline font is boring. Arial, what is this a computer manual? I was always told that font is important, but changing the font in Canvas has wasted a lot of my time (it might not seem like much, but 5 seconds for every assignment, for every class, every semester adds up). I generally prefer a font with a little more flair, not much, something like Times New Roman or Georgia. Serifs increase retention, make reading easier to read, and, in my opinion, are makes reading more enjoyable.   There's a difference between this and this.   Evidence: " Readability studies have actually found that  serif typefaces are easier to read  because the added strokes make each character more distinctive. More distinctive letters are easier for the eye to recognize quickly."   ... View more