Community

willmoin · ‎01-31-2023

Thanks for the update - we had been sending our staff to vent suggest product enhancements on the community site for some time and were wondering why we could not click on the stars anymore. It was annoying when we shifted to the new community sitem as the old one seemed to be much better for upvoting ideas. I like being able to vote for things, and it's useful to be able to send teachers to those ideas as a holding pattern, and on the face of it the proposed idea of 30-day windows for voting every 6 months sounds to me like you are trying to restrict flow of ideas from users, wheras I think the backlog and lack of recognising ideas that align to priorities sounds like a company issue not a user issue. Also sad to see that here is no mention of the Canvas Teacher App within your priorities above - seems a real shame as some very simple inclusions could make this a killer application for Canvas. In fact that example illustrates an issue with the voting system: having 'filtering by Groups' added (alongside Sections that already exists), would draw more staff to use the app particularly in live teaching or marking by TAs, but without people being drawn to the app then the feature gap is not revealed and then there is no one to vote for it. Catch-22 Will, Liverpool UK

willmoin · ‎11-09-2022

Voted. Please also consider voting for my suggestion to bring the 'Launch SpeedGrader Filtered by Groups' feature to the app (below). Thanks, Will Filter assignment submissions by group/seminar on iPad: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Bring-SpeedGrader-Filtered-by-Student-Group-to-the-Canvas/idi-p/480424

willmoin · ‎11-09-2022

@sbrumbaugh2 please do shake the dead. It's been 5 years and the world is a very different place. Our lecturers want to use Canvas wirelessly within seminars to quickly record participation, and entering via a grades area, with a group filter is what we had in mind. I am also upset that the Launch SpeedGrader Filtered by Groups setting has no effect on the app: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Bring-SpeedGrader-Filtered-by-Student-Group-to-the-Canvas/idi-p/480424

willmoin · ‎10-25-2022

Thanks @James - that's a good starter, I'll see if we can progress this. As always, thanks to you and all the other amazing community members for all you do!

willmoin · ‎10-24-2022

Thanks @James and @a1063023 - I think using the API to detect an incomplete rubric would be a big timesaver here, where I think staff are still eyeballing the rubric on each submission - they may well still do this but having an API flag would be belt-and-braces. So far I hacked something together to return entries for specified rubric criteria (having to know in advance the id of each criteria row), ending up with a spreadsheet I would then scan through. I'm not a coder but is the approach you use along these lines? When I encountered the first person using the rubric I had to catch myself before I channeled my inner Steve Jobs ("you're holding it the wrong way"). Previously I'd seen rubrics used for marking essays and assignments with a handful of criteria, rather than as an exam grading sheet. We have zero appetite for moving away from SpeedGrader, but a recent demo by CrowdMark looked good for allowing grading by question https://crowdmark.com/help/grading-a-remote-exam/. Since I posted this request I'm meeting more staff who use the rubric in this way, mainly from science and engineering areas.

willmoin · ‎10-20-2022

Yeah this is a bit crazy - with some of our staff in a justaposition between Classic Quizzes and New Quizzes (too late to reverse strategy now) it very difficult to know how best to signpost students to a collection of non-grade bearing quizzes. It seems from our testing that all New Quizzes appear in Assignments regardless of the 'Do not count this assignment towards the final grade' setting, which our tutors (also from languages) do not want. However the Quiz area has this weird distinction that no longer has relevance with New Quizzes. Help!!!!!!

willmoin · ‎08-24-2022

Screenshot of annotated pdf with timestamped comments showing

willmoin · ‎08-24-2022

Problem statement: Instructors have found that the 'Download Annotated PDF' button results in a PDF that includes timestamps against when each comment or annotation is left. When viewed within Adobe Reader (and maybe also other PDF viewers) the timestamps are clearly visible within a Comments box. It is felt that this information is superfluous to the student and also a bit intrusive for how staff work. Proposed solution: Unless there is a clear outweighing reason for why timestamps are needed (and we would guess that in the far majority of cases this information is not needed) then Canvas/DocuViewer should not report timestamps against each comment User role(s): admin,instructor,ta,designer

willmoin · ‎05-09-2022

We have been having an issue whereby grading staff are failing to fully complete rubrics when grading work in SpeedGrader. Because the rubric is often applied with the setting 'Use this rubric for assignment grading turned on' an incomplete rubric has a dramatic effect on the students grade for the assignment. What we would like to see is a Warning appear when the grader hit's Save on the rubric (when the total score copies from the rubric into the assignment grade). The warning should read that the rubric grading is incomplete and whether user wishes to Save or continue editing. Screenshot showing the rubric tool in the SpeedGrader which has been saved in an incompleted state I think the problem is exacerbated by the move away away from on-campus exams, where graders are using the rubric to generate an exact grade for things like multipart scanned exam scripts, also where submissions are anonymised and a grader has a large number of scripts it can be like a needle in a haystack to identify problems. We have tried looking at the API, but the solution there seems very unwieldy for what is required. I would welcome the thoughts of other Canvas users, and if you support the idea please log-in to this system and click on the five stars above to vote on this idea. You can also speak to your administrative team about raising with your CSM at Instructure which can also apparently help. Many thanks, Will I note that Belen reported the same issue (does not appear to have a feature request): https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Question-Forum/Incomplete-rubrics/td-p/492841 And a related Idea Conversation to implement autosaving of the rubric: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Auto-Save-Rubrics-or-Give-Save-Warning/idi-p/377552

willmoin · ‎12-13-2021

Hi, I've noticed on our Canvas that any hyperlinks typed in in the Rich Content Editor are practically indistinguishable from the normal colour font. Once Published our standard theme is applied, but it is when editing/producing content it's very difficult to determine if text is a link or not just by looking at it. I have raised this with the 'Tier 1' Instructure support team and have had a pretty confused response (case number 08140733 for anyone following), but I wondered if others also saw this on their own setup? I attach a screenshot, where interestingly the contrast appears mildly better than it actually is within the browser, maybe something around the fileformat of the screenshot. Thanks, Will

willmoin · ‎12-09-2021

We also have tutors of large courses that also face this issue. Is the rationalle for the 100 student limit written down anywhere online that we can take a look at? I'm guessing it is to avoid spam counter-measures. If this is the case, I wondered why the Inbox could not consolidate all the individually-sent messages as if it was sent out as one?

willmoin · ‎11-17-2021

There is a lot of interest in anonymous discussion board posting in our uni that has recently come over to Canvas and I can see it would be especially valuable to those courses which have discussion of sensitive nature to individuals. It's been penciled in in the 3rd phase of the Dicussion Board/Announcements redesign so given it has been such a long-term request it would be good to see some definite news on this. By implementing 3rd party tools to deliver on this instead (in absense of development) further dilutes the Canvas offering IMO

willmoin · ‎11-08-2021

It would be useful if Instructure delivered on this fully by getting the setting properly signified to instructors within the Grades area. At the moment, depending upon assessment setup their is a hotchpotch of 'cross-eye' symbols against a student's invididual grade under the Total column (seems to be if a constituent part has been graded or not). What would be much better is if the column header for Total had the cross-eye symbol there instead to give our users confidence in the system Screenshot of the Total column in the Canvas Grades area, showing how the column does not feature a 'cross-eye' icon in the header, but does appear seemingly randomly against grades (Screenshot of the Total column in the Canvas Grades area, showing how the column does not feature a 'cross-eye' icon in the header, but does appear seemingly randomly against grades)

willmoin · ‎10-22-2021

We could really do with a method for students to be able to download the captions as a transcript. There was an Idea Exchange/feature request for it but unfortunately with only 4 votes it got archived (more a problem with the voting system than anything else I think): https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Enable-closed-captions-transcripts-to-be-available-for-students/idi-p/417127 For a lecturer who has 60 videos I suggested the approach below, but given that number the lecturer fed back that it wasn't a realistic prospect, so it would be really good to see something nice and free added to Canvas to save us work! These are how you do it: 1. So now that the captions have been created in Canvas Studio, you can download them using the instructions about 2/3rds of the way down this guide: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Studio/How-do-I-upload-a-caption-file-to-Canvas-Studio-media/ta-p/1702 2. This downloads a .zip file containing two '.srt' files (they will probably both be the same). These are text files that you can open up in NotePad, or TextEdit, and you can probably even persuade Microsoft Word to open them. But what you will find is that all of your words are there but they are not in paragraph format; they contain the 'time codes' that relate to where in the video the caption applies. 3. You could either manually edit the file to remove these (for example in Word), but even better there are web services that will do this for you for free. Here is an example website 'Happyscribe' where you can upload the .srt file and have it output a text file without the timecode: https://www.happyscribe.com/subtitle-tools/convert-srt-to-text 4. Upload the text file into your course, and place links to it maybe next to your video

willmoin · ‎10-21-2021

Hi, not really a question... Just to share a resource we developed at our uni outlinining a workflow that our lecturers found for providing feedback and grading assignments using the Canvas Teacher app. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYnJfQ1fVL0 https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/centre-for-innovation-in-education/resources/all-resources/speedgrader-canvas-teacher-app-stylus-digital-ink.html (written guide) Our lecturers found that the touch interface for rubric entry, stylus and voice-to-text features have sped up the marking process. Traditionally they may have been using bulk download of submissions and tracked changes in Word, but by being able to annotate directly on assignments via SpeedGrader on the app and within the Canvas ecosystem have kept things much more secure and manageable. Hope it's useful, Will, Liverpool UK

willmoin · ‎10-21-2021

I also support this. As mentioned above there is this feature but it only anonymises the 'inline' comments left in the DocuViewer window. Our staff who ask about this need to hide names from both the inline and the SpeedGrader comments - it's not everybody all the time, but for rare occassions. Can anyone explain why there is this disparity? I would have thought SpeedGrader would have been easier to apply this to as it appears more integral to Canvas than DocuViewer. I am guessing it is something to do with the comments being a part of an onwards 'dialogue' with students and removing names fundamentally upsets this. Also a UK university, staff may be using marking sheets, but from those I have spoken to ther have a bank of graders on large assessments and they are marking directly into SpeedGrader and just needed to anonymise themselves Will, Liverpool UK

willmoin · ‎10-15-2021

Looks like they resolved it, I got this reply to the case below, and testing on our Beta it looks good now: students can happily submit without strange behaviour, they can see the submission, and then instructors can see and grade the video from within Speedgrader: Your Canvas case 07922838 has been updated with a new message. Hello, We've deployed a fix for this issue in our Beta environment. If all goes well, it will make it to the live Production environment on October 27, 2021. This ticket will remain in an "On-Hold" status until then. Admins and instructors: Feel free to try out the fix if you have time. As a reminder, your normal login should get you into Beta if you simply add ".beta" to your institution's Canvas URL (i.e. "canvas.beta.instructure.com"). Keep in mind that the Beta environment has outbound notifications disabled (it's for testing only). Apologies to any students who are receiving this message; testing in Beta is most often disabled for students at various institutions. However, rest assured that we are working to have this issue addressed soon. We will notify you of any changes to the status of this fix. We appreciate your time and attention - if you have any questions about this message or this fix, please feel free to contact Support. Keep Learning! Support Panda Notifier of Things

willmoin · ‎10-13-2021

This is good discussion. In our case we're looking to help lecturers who are looking to have attachments on assignments. The assignments have availability dates but the 'anyone with link' approach doesn't seem very secure in this context for these types of reasons. In our case I think we'll have to set an availability date on the file as well

willmoin · ‎10-11-2021

Seems to be an issue again as of October 2021 case opened (Case #08140733) and they're saying that the theme editor does not seem to be having an impact in Edit mode

willmoin · ‎10-08-2021

Thanks very much @gnoack again for looking at this! Very interesting. From my blurry eyes it looks like for you your input rendered correctly to the output. I might be missing something there and will need a relook next week. But what you noticed in Excel was interesting, when I looked to and selected US locale for the date I also did not see astrisk so maybe it's anything other than your OS locale then it takes away this option. Testing out what you did with the US format, I found that Canvas did interpret the US date format as recorded in Excel (still gets UK stuff with the asterisk wrong though - which I think is the default) What you found I think backs up what Tier 1 found on their own PC, which at the time I didn't think made much sense. In fact in a sense the Tier 1 person was correct in that all dates need to not have the asterisk, so before uploading an Excel to Canvas make sure any dates don't have one. If Preview could interpret correctly the asterisk (which I think is the default in Excel) for the customers server this would be better - unless I'm wrong! Hope you have a good one when it arrives. a 9.2 IPA is calling my name "I see that you are seeing the date format change on files when uploading them to Canvas. Taking a look a the example file that you sent to me, it looks like the format is m/d/y and when I am testing this in my own instance, the format of dates that are entered are left d/m/y when uploaded into Canvas. In this case I would recommend looking at how Excel is exporting those file to make sure it is exporting the files in the correct format." (Tier 1)

Post Details	Date Published	Views	Likes
[SpeedGrader] Removal of timestamps from 'Download Annotated PDF' Problem statement: Instructors have found that the 'Download Annotated PDF' button results in a PDF that includes timestamps against when each comment or annotation is left. When viewed within Adobe...	08-24-2022	207	0
[SpeedGrader] Warning for Incomplete Rubric grading We have been having an issue whereby grading staff are failing to fully complete rubrics when grading work in SpeedGrader. Because the rubric is often applied with the setting 'Use this rubric for as...	05-09-2022	842	0
Hyperlink font color in Rich Content Editor Hi, I've noticed on our Canvas that any hyperlinks typed in in the Rich Content Editor are practically indistinguishable from the normal colour font. Once Published our standard theme is applied, b...	12-13-2021	550	0
Our resource on grading assignments using stylus and the Canvas Teacher app Hi, not really a question... Just to share a resource we developed at our uni outlinining a workflow that our lecturers found for providing feedback and grading assignments using the Canvas Teacher...	10-21-2021	365	2
DD/MM/YY date format in excel files displaying as MM/DD/YY Oh I love problems like this.... not! So one of our lecturers on our new install of Canvas was uploading a timetable in Excel format to her course and finds that the document viewer within Canvas i...	10-07-2021	889	1
[Mobile - Canvas Teacher] Bring "SpeedGrader Filtered by Student Group" to the Canvas Teacher app We now have the incredibly useful 'Launch SpeedGrader Filtered by Student Group' course setting. This is useful for splitting up grading of paper in SpeedGrader based on group, e.g for different...	08-27-2021	571	0
Canvas Studio assignment submissions 'Invalid Launch' errors Hi Folks, We're getting an issue with Canvas and Canvas Studio whereby if an instructor sets up an assignment with Online> File Upload type, and student submits a Canvas Studio video, an e...	08-25-2021	1833	0
Quiz Timer disconnection auto-submit Hi Everyone, Coming over from Blackboard I was really happy to see that the Quiz feature of Canvas had a decent Timer setup, that appears to keep counting down regardless if student leaves th...	05-11-2021	2803	1
Anonymous grade reports on an anonymous assignment Hi Folks, I'm supporting various teams in our migration year (what a year) to Canvas at our uni, and we're now in Exam season we're trying to identify suitable workflows. A typical workflow...	04-15-2021	398	1
Mechanism for assigning an assignment or exam question from a random pool Hi Folks, We're getting this request quite a bit, obviously this year more than ever here in the UK where we'd normally have exam rooms, invigilators etc. What we're finding is that s...	04-08-2021	525	1
Copy Files between courses like 'Copy To'/Direct Share Hi All, we were pretty pleased with the Direct Share feature to copy content between courses and were promoting it as an alternative to the export/import tool. However a user has stumped me today, ...	02-08-2021	401	0
Was there a change made to the Collaborations tool provisioning group docs? Hi All, We're just running off some training and showing the Collaborations feature. Last time I used this at a different uni, as an instructor you could create one new collaboration using O365, sele...	02-02-2021	409	0
Mastery Paths feeding into Module Requirements>Prereq for following module Hi All, usual Xmas fun here. I've got a module (A) with a mastery path in it. I have a following module (B) which has a Badgr digital badge gift. I have set A to have a Requirement of studen...	12-15-2020	586	0
Advice around Large Course design Hi Folks, Our uni is mid-way through migration to Canvas from Blackboard. For the majority of our taught degrees which are modular in design this is pretty easy going, each 'module' (think ~12week u...	11-30-2020	639	1
Possibly not Canvas: Best way to annotate a PDF with stylus Hi All, question here that might not be a Canvas specific. Has anybody got any favoured approaches for annotating students submitted pdfs with stylus inking, and then resaving as a pdf that students ...	11-13-2020	539	0
Ways to explain levels of Publishing in Canvas? Hi Folks, Was wondering if anybody had any good examples/ideas of explaining the different levels of publishing in Canvas? We're just migrating over at the moment at our uni and we're looking ...	10-19-2020	817	0
Duplicate correct answers in New Quizzes Hi, we have a use case whereby we want there to be duplicate answers available within Matching question type, but not having the answer appear multiple times to student. This is fine in Classic but N...	04-17-2020	627	1
Where do videos recorded in RCE get stored and best approach Hi All, I'm just supporting a team who are looking at options for sharing narrated PowerPoints with students. One option I've identified (not necessarily the best) is taking a video file recor...	03-23-2020	2397	1
Changes to our Rich Text Content Editor Hi All, Noticed our rich text editor looks a bit different this evening. wondered if others had noticed or if it's just something our IT dept have enabled. Apologies been out of the Canvas loop for ...	01-22-2020	1308	2
Games to engage instructors to explore Canvas features Hi All, We're in the process of rolling Canvas out here at the University of Liverpool, and we've got an event coming up that I'd like to try to do something a bit different for. The temptation...	01-07-2020	715	3

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