Canvas Release Notes (2021-03-20)
Effective March 22, release notes comments will be managed differently to provide a better experience for everyone. For details, please see the Canvas tl;dr blog.
In this Canvas release (March 20), students can use their webcam to submit File Upload assignments.
In SpeedGrader, instructors can reassign an assignment to an individual student and ask them to redo their submission. In Course Settings, the Participation menu includes an option to select course dates by term or course. Files linked in the Rich Content Editor can be previewed in an overlay or inline.
The Course Files - add / edit / delete permission has been grouped into three separate permissions. Additionally, the Add/Remove Teachers, Designers, TAs permission and the Add/Remove Students permission have been consolidated and separated into individual user permissions.
Feature Options
- For institutions using the Learning Mastery Gradebook, the Names menu includes filters for showing inactive and concluded enrollments.
External Tools (LTI)
- For institutions using the New Quizzes LTI, New Quizzes can be created when adding a quiz to a module.
For all resources and feedback information related to this release, see the Release Resources section at the end of this document. Related Links
|
- New Features
- Assignments
- Webcam Submissions
- Updated Features
- Course Settings
- Course Availability Date Enhancements
- Modules
- New Quizzes Support
- Outcomes
- Learning Mastery Gradebook Student Filters
- Permissions
- Manage Course Files Granularity
- Users Granularity
- Rich Content Editor
- File Preview Enhancements
- SpeedGrader
- Submission Reassignments
- Change Log
- Release Resources
New Features |
Assignments
Webcam Submissions
Feature Functionality Details |
N/A |
Affected Canvas Areas |
Assignments |
Affects User Interface |
Yes |
Affected User Roles |
Students |
Related Idea Conversations |
|
Feature Video |
Summary
In File Upload assignments, students can use their webcam to submit to an assignment.
Change Benefit
This change allows students to use their webcam to submit a file upload assignment from the browser and aligns behavior with the Canvas Student app.
Affected User Roles & Behaviors
Students
For File Upload assignments, students have the option to use their webcam for file uploads. The first time they use the feature, they will need to give permission to Canvas to access their computer webcam. Like all other graded submission types, images submitted via the webcam functionality do not count against course or user quota.
Instructors
Instructors can view uploaded images submitted via a student’s webcam as they see other file uploads in SpeedGrader and anywhere that submissions are available.
Updated Features |
Course Settings
Course Availability Date Enhancements
This feature is enabled for all institutions through a feature option in Account Settings, which can be temporarily disabled until 2021-04-17. Please view the content below for additional details. For more information about feature options, please see the Canvas Release Notes FAQ.
Feature Functionality Details |
New Course Availability UI Feature Option (temporary) |
Location to Enable Feature |
Account Settings, Feature Options |
Feature Functionality Details |
N/A |
Affected Canvas Areas |
Course Settings |
Beta/Test Environment Support |
Yes |
Affects User Interface |
Yes |
Affected User Roles |
Instructors |
Feature Video |
Course Settings: Course Availability Date Enhancements (2021-03-20 Canvas Release) |
Feature Q&A |
Summary
The Participation menu includes an option to select course dates by term or course.
Change Benefit
This change offers clarification for how student participation is managed for a course.
Affected User Roles
Instructors
When an instructor views the Participation section in the Course Settings page, the Participation section displays a menu that defaults to Term dates for new courses. This option sets student course participation to the start and end dates defined for the term.
If preferred, instructors can change course participation to the Course option, where course participation is limited to the course start and end dates, which can be added in the course. Course dates override term dates; however, section dates that exist in the course override course dates.
Course dates default to midnight. If the course is set to end at midnight, the page displays a warning icon.
The Participation option is retained when the Course Settings page is updated.
Notes:
- The options to restrict students from viewing the course after the end date and before the start date have not been affected.
-
Existing courses will be set by existing dates. If a course includes custom course dates and the participation checkbox is selected, the new Participation checkbox will be set to the Course option. However, if the participation checkbox in the old interface was not selected to override term dates—even if custom start and end dates were included—the new Participation checkbox will be set to the Term option.
Modules
New Quizzes Support
This feature is used in conjunction with an external tool (LTI) in Canvas. Please view the content below for additional details. For more information about LTI tools, please see the Canvas Release Notes FAQ
Location to Enable Feature |
Modules |
Feature Functionality Details |
|
Affected Canvas Areas |
Modules |
Beta/Test Environment Support |
Yes |
Permissions |
Course Content - add / edit / delete |
Affects User Interface |
Yes |
Affected User Roles |
Instructors |
Related Idea Conversation |
|
Feature Video |
Summary
New Quizzes can be created as part of adding a quiz to a module.
Change Benefit
This change allows instructors to create quizzes using the New Quizzes LTI in modules.
Affected User Roles
Instructors
When an instructor adds an item to a module and selects a quiz, the Create Quiz option displays both the New Quizzes and Classic Quizzes quiz engines. New Quizzes is the default, but instructors can switch to Classic Quizzes and create a name for the quiz.
Existing quizzes in the module are also identified as a classic quiz if created with the Classic Quizzes quiz engine.
Workflow Change Note: For instructors, clicking a New Quizzes title will now always open the Assignment Details page for the quiz, so that availability adjustments can be made faster.
Outcomes
Learning Mastery Gradebook Student Filters
This feature is used in conjunction with an existing feature option in Canvas. Please view the content below for additional details. For more information about feature options, please see the Canvas Release Notes FAQ.
Location to Enable Feature |
Learning Mastery Gradebook |
Feature Functionality Details |
|
Affected Canvas Areas |
Learning Mastery Gradebook |
Affects User Interface |
Yes |
Affected User Roles |
Instructors |
Feature Video |
Learning Mastery Gradebook: Student Filters (2021-03-20 Canvas Release) |
Summary
The Learning Mastery Gradebook includes filters for inactive and concluded enrollments.
Change Benefit
This change allows instructors to view outcomes data in the Learning Mastery Gradebook for students who no longer have an active enrollment in their course.
Affected User Roles & Behaviors
Instructors
In the Students menu, instructors can show or hide outcomes data for students with inactive and/or concluded enrollments, along with all active enrollments. By default, data is not shown for inactive and concluded enrollments.
Permissions
Manage Course Files Granularity
Location to Enable Feature |
N/A |
Affected Canvas Areas |
Permissions |
Affects User Interface |
Yes |
Affected User Roles |
Admins |
Community Idea Contributions |
In Permissions, Separate "Manage (add/edit/delete) course files" into 3 permissions |
Feature Video |
Permissions: Course Files and Users (2021-03-20 Canvas Release) |
Summary
The Course Files - add / edit / delete permission has been grouped into three separate permissions.
Change Benefit
This change provides granularity among the three options to manage course files. This update does not affect Canvas APIs.
Affected User Roles
Admins
The Course Files add, edit, and delete permissions are grouped in the permissions list as the Manage Course Files permission.
As with other permissions, the row displays icons that represent the permission status for the user role. All three permissions within the group can be managed together by clicking the main icon for the user role.
To manage individual permissions within the group, the group can be expanded. Each granular permission that is enabled includes a check mark. Individual permissions for the group can be managed by selecting or deselecting the relevant permission. When the permission includes a mix of enabled and disabled permissions, the main permission status indicates the permission is partially enabled, using a half-filled green circle as the icon.
Course Files - add: add course files
Course Files - delete: delete course files
Course Files - edit: edit course files
Individual permissions for a user role can be changed to the full enabled or disabled state at any time by changing the status for the main permission.
Users Granularity
Location to Enable Feature |
N/A |
Affected Canvas Areas |
Permissions |
Affects User Interface |
Yes |
Affected User Roles |
Admins |
Community Idea Contributions |
|
Feature Video |
Permissions: Course Files and Users (2021-03-20 Canvas Release) |
Summary
The Add/Remove Teachers, Designers, TAs permission and the Add/Remove Students permission have been reorganized into individual user permissions.
Change Benefit
This change provides granularity among the options to manage users. This update does not affect Canvas APIs.
Affected User Roles
Admins
Note: The beta environment does not reflect how permissions will be updated in the production environment. As part of the production deploy, Canvas engineers will generate a backend migration to match existing user permissions with the granular permissions. This migration was not done in the beta environment.
The Add/Remove Teachers, Designers, TAs permission and the Add/Remove Students permission have been renamed as Users - Allow Administrative Actions and Users - Manage Students in Course, respectively.
Additionally, the functionality to add and remove users has been reorganized into individual user permissions:
Users - Designers
Users - Observers
Users - Students
Users - TAs
Users - Teachers
Note: For account roles, the Users - add / remove observers permission is not affected by this change, as that permission manages observer enrollments at the account level.
As with other permissions, the row displays icons that represent the permission status for the user role. All permissions within the group can be managed together by clicking the main icon for the user role.
Users Permissions
To manage individual permissions within the group, the group can be expanded. Each granular permission that is enabled includes a check mark. Individual permissions for the group can be managed by selecting or deselecting the relevant permission. When the permission includes a mix of enabled and disabled permissions, the main permission status indicates the permission is partially enabled, using a half-filled green circle as the icon.
Users - Designers: Add / Remove in courses
Users - Observers: Add / Remove in courses
Users - Students: Add / Remove in courses
Users - TAs: Add / Remove in courses
Users - Teachers: Add / Remove in courses
Individual permissions for a user role can be changed to the full enabled or disabled state at any time by changing the status for the main permission.
Users - Allow Administrative Actions
The Add / Remove Teachers, Designers, and TAs permission has been renamed to Users - allow administrative actions in courses. This permission manages administrative functionality for all user roles except students. By default, the Teacher and Student TA roles can manage this permission.
This permission includes all existing functionality except for adding or removing users:
- Allows user to view login ID information for users in the course
- Allows user to view the People page settings menu for users
- Allows user to view details for users in the course
- Allows user to limit students to only view fellow section members
Users - Manage Students in Courses
The Users - add / remove students permission has been renamed to Users - manage students in courses. This permission manages administrative functionality for students. By default, the Teacher and Student TA roles can manage this permission.
This permission includes all existing functionality except for adding or removing students:
- Allows user to view login ID information for students.
- Allows user to view prior enrollments.
- Allows user to access a user’s settings menu and user details.
- Allows user to edit a student’s section or role.
- Allows user to resend course invitations from the Course People page.
Rich Content Editor
File Preview Enhancements
Location to Enable Feature |
N/A |
Feature Functionality Details |
N/A |
Affected Canvas Areas |
Rich Content Editor |
Affects User Interface |
Yes |
Affected User Roles |
All Users |
Feature Video |
Rich Content Editor: File Preview Enhancements (2021-03-20 Canvas Release) |
Summary
Files linked in the Rich Content Editor can be previewed in an overlay or inline.
Change Benefit
This change allows users to control the display of the file preview. Previously all file previews opened in a new browser tab.
Affected User Roles
All Users
Users who link a file can open the File Options menu and indicate a preview type.
- Preview in overlay displays the existing file preview functionality, where the file preview opens and overlays the entire page.
- Preview inline loads the displays the preview directly in the Rich Content Editor window once the file is clicked. If the option to expand the preview by default is also selected as an option, the file is automatically expanded in the page and the user does not need to click the file to view it. Instead, the user can close the preview by clicking the Minimize Preview link that displays along with the image.
SpeedGrader
Submission Reassignments
Location to Enable Feature |
SpeedGrader |
Feature Functionality Details |
N/A |
Affected Canvas Areas |
SpeedGrader |
Affects User Interface |
Yes |
Affected User Roles |
Instructors |
Related Idea Conversations |
|
Feature Video |
SpeedGrader: Submission Reassignments (2021-03-20 Canvas Release) |
Summary
In SpeedGrader, instructors can reassign an assignment with a due date to an individual student and ask them to redo their submission.
Change Benefit
This change allows instructors to provide feedback and reassign an assignment to an individual student, which places the assignment back in the List View Dashboard as another assignment to complete.
Affected User Roles & Behaviors
Instructors
For online assignments with a due date, instructors can view a Reassign button in SpeedGrader. If they require a student to redo an assignment, they can reassign the assignment directly to the student from within their grading workflow in SpeedGrader. The instructor must first provide feedback regarding the assignment, which will enable the button. The reassignment does not change the original due date for the student.
Notes
- The Reassign Assignment button is not available for External Tools (LTI), on paper, and no submission assignments.
- The Reassign Assignment button is only available for assignments with due dates.
- If an instructor returns to SpeedGrader after navigating away from the page, the Reassign Assignment button shows that the assignment has been reassigned.
- If the assignment's settings do not allow students to make an additional attempt, the Reassign Assignment shows that the assignment is not able to be reassigned.
Students
When an assignment is reassigned, students see the assignment in the List View Dashboard with the instructor’s feedback. Students can resubmit the assignment and submit for additional feedback from their instructor.
Change Log |
2021-03-16 2021-03-05
2021-03-03
2021-02-24 |
Changed—Course Settings: Course Availability Date Enhancements
Added Feature Videos Added note at top of document announcing release notes comment changes |
2021-02-22 | Published Release Notes |
Release Resources |
User Summaries
Release features are summarized for individual roles in the User Summaries page.
Canvas Chat
Want to chat with other customers about any of these features? Sign up to view and join our Collaborative Release Chats in the CanvasLIVE Calendar. Chats take place ten days after these notes are published.
New Feature Screencast
View a screencast of all the updates included in this release in the New Feature Screencast page.
tl;dr Podcast & Blogs
Features in this release may be included in product blogs and our product podcast, the Canvas tl;dr. For related links, check the Canvas Release Archive for this release date.
Feature Enhancements
The release notes indicate available functionality for a feature. If you want to see any future development planned for any features included in these notes, please visit the Roadmap. Have an idea you don't see prioritized in the next three months? Visit the Idea Conversations page.
Feature Support
All items listed in the release notes are immediately available for testing in the Canvas beta environment, unless otherwise indicated. If functionality in the beta environment does not match the functionality shown in the release notes, please submit a support case through your institution's preferred method as shown in your Global Navigation Help Menu. The Canvas Support Team can help escalate behaviors that may need to be resolved before they are deployed to the production environment, which takes place on the date of these release notes. When submitting a case, please indicate that the behavior is occurring in the beta environment.
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A HUGE THANK YOU for adding the user role granularity in permissions! That is an awesome addition and one we've been waiting on for a long time. I know a lot of admins are in the same boat and are going to love this!
-Chris
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Regarding the course date change... I do like the look of the new design. That being said, we really do not want teachers to be able to change course date settings on their own (we define them through term settings, and only an admin should be able to do overrides). Since this area is getting a little love right now, what would an admin panda have to do to get that setting put behind a permission? I know date settings/hopes/dreams vary wildly across institutions, so a permission could really help out institutions like ours who want to restrict the ability to change course dates, while letting other institutions allow more flexibility if they wish. We've struggled with this for years. I even have javascript to disable the current date boxes (which I know many other places have installed as well), so everyone will need to update our javascript with this change. A built-in permission would really make me an even happier panda than I already am from the user permissions breakout!
-Chris
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Sorry for my now third remark in a row here, but I've tried modifying my javascript to disable the new date options, and I can't figure out how to do it. I can hide the section completely, but usually we just disable it so faculty can see the setting but not change it. For some reason, it seems like the engineers used a lot of complicated HTML/CSS to create the dropdown box, instead of just using a standard input like most other elements on the page have. I'm only moderately good at JS (enough to do a lot of small customizations like this in the past), but this one seems beyond my ability to fix (making a permission even more important at this moment). Are there any other JS experts out here who could take a shot as disabling (graying out) the new participation dropdown box, maybe @James? I know the release is a month away, but I don't want to get bitten by this change, so would like to get something working sooner rather than later, especially because I know quite a few others use my existing JS or created their own to disable the options in the current version of the settings page.
-Chris
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@chriscas I agree with you about the course start/end dates. We also disabled the ability for our instructors to change the course start/end dates on their own using global JavaScript. We have built-in buffers where our start dates in Canvas are 7 days prior to the official start date and the Canvas end date is 14 days after the official end date. In our "beta" environment, I masqueraded as an instructor, and I can change these dates ... even with the JavaScript code enabled.
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Will the Course Availability Date Enhancements affect the API to provision courses with the course start and end dates?
course[start_at] and course[end_at] from POST /api/v1/accounts/:account_id/courses
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Question about Modules: New Quizzes Support... I am a Canvas admin, and we do not yet have New Quizzes turned on in our account...nor is it turned on in our courses. I went into our "beta" environment, and I confirmed in my own sandbox course that I was not able to create a New Quiz via these instructions: How do I create an assessment using New Quizzes? - Canvas Community. However, when I go to the "Modules" page and add a brand new Quiz item to my module, I am presented with both the "New Quizzes" and "Classic Quizzes" option. I can select the "New Quizzes" option, and it creates that item at the bottom of my module. I can click on that new item in my module, and then click "Save & Publish"...which takes me right into the New Quizzes interface to start building questions.
Further, if I return back to my "Quizzes" index page, if I try to delete the New Quiz I just created, I get a message saying, "Quiz deletion failed." I appears as though the New Quiz was removed, but if I refresh my "Quizzes" index page, the New Quiz is still there, and I cannot remove it.
It seems to me that the "New Quizzes" option when adding a new item via the "Modules" page shouldn't be an option unless it's turned on, correct?
Has anyone else experienced these issues?
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While I'm grateful for the Users Granularity change, it appears to me to have an undesirable side-effect of changing existing user permissions.
In our current production environment, the "Users - add / remove students in courses" permission is disabled for every course role. In beta, however, both "Users - Students" permissions, "Add Students to courses" and "Remove Students from courses," are enabled for most, but (strangely) not all, course roles.
This isn't behavior that I'd expect to see. Is anyone else seeing this?
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@dgrobani Yes...I am seeing this as well. As an admin, I see the following:
The "Users - add / remove students in courses" row doesn't have anything enabled, but when I masqueraded as an instructor in a course in "beta", I was able to manually enroll students (the "+ People" button was clickable on the "People" page for instructors).
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Backing this up a level, why do we have both "Users - Students" with "Add / Remove in courses" and still the original "Users - add / remove students in courses". Aren't those the same permissions, one with granularity and one without?
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Chris, those random ReactJS classnames make it much harder to do the customizations we need, so I hope they put it behind an option along with all of the other things course defaults from the admin > settings page.
That said, a CSS selector that will grab the input element is #availability_options_container span[direction=column] input
Unfortunately, disabling it with CSS doesn't work. Neither does disabling it with JavaScript. They have an event listener on it so that when you click on it, it pops up the date picker. And the event listener isn't just on the input element, you have to back up 8 spans, a label, and 1 more span and it's on everything under that. I went into the developer tools in Chrome and moved elements around and outside of that and played with inserting elements into the spans and removing classnames and the event listeners stayed.
Knowing that event listeners are duplicated when you clone a node, I decided to replace the elements with a clone of themselves, except with the input disabled, the SVG calendar icon gone, and the background of the input set to light gray (matching the color that Chrome was using in the current release of Canvas).
It takes a clickable this:
and turns it into a non-editable this:
I am giving the JavaScript that works from the console in the browser. However, there's a [good] possibility that it will not work for you when you try it in your custom JavaScript for the account. That's because all of the stuff that I'm manipulating isn't in the HTML that is delivered from the server, it's all added by React when it processes the page. In the past, that has often meant using a Mutation Observer to detect when the page changes and that content is ready.
(function() {
const p = document.querySelector('#availability_options_container span[direction=column]');
const nodes = [];
p.childNodes.forEach(e => {
const r = e.querySelector('span[direction=row] span[direction=row]');
if (r.childNodes.length === 2) {
r.removeChild(r.lastChild);
const el = e.querySelector('input');
el.disabled = true;
el.style.backgroundColor = '#eeeeee';
nodes.push(e.cloneNode(true));
}
});
if (nodes.length === 2) {
while (p.firstChild) {
p.removeChild(p.firstChild);
}
nodes.forEach(node => p.appendChild(node));
}
})();
This should probably go somewhere other than in the release notes. The community help says that you can write your own personal blog, but it doesn't say how and I can't figure it out.
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We've also used javascript to prevent faculty from changing the dates on the course. It would be fantastic to have a permission entry for "Change course dates"
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In regards to the new reassign function, I think this is a missed opportunity. "The reassignment does not change the original due date for the student."
I teach composition, and revision is part of the process. Right now there are no really good mechanisms for this. Either I change the due dates for one assignment, or I create two assignments (rough draft, final draft), which is itself limiting because there's an indication that there are only two drafts (I could make an assignment for each draft, but that becomes ridiculous).
Including a due date change option in the reassign function could potentially support composition classes in ways that Canvas has so far failed to do without creating multiple assignments. I could conceivably reassign and create a new due date for each student in the same function, rather than reassigning and then having to go back to an assignment's settings and then giving that student a new due date.
Reassigning without the ability to simultaneously update a due date is mostly useless to me.
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@James These are the directions for writing a blog post: when you're ready, select the appropriate group hub and start posting.
How do I create a blog post in the Canvas Communit...
Please let me know if you run into issues with this, and also where you saw the reference to a personal blog so we can get that sorted.
Thank you for contributing yet another awesome solution.
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@James ,thanks for pointing in a possible direction here, much appreciated! When I get a chance I'll try that code in an actual js file. I surely hope a MutationObserver isn't necessary, as I still have a lot of trouble wrapping my head around those (even though I've gotten a couple to work in the past just by trial and error).
I do really hope Instructure sees how difficult JS customizations are getting to be at this point. Something that used to be one simple line of code to disable now can require 20+ lines, and a super-wizard like James to figure out. It's definitely not sustainable. I believe what we really need in this case is a permission exclusively for course settings, with dropdown options for individual items (like what we're seeing now for add/edit/remove). The permission could be "course settings - change", and the dropdown checkbox rows could be something like "course dates," "visibility," "format," etc. I might create a feature idea for this, but I'm posting at least the skeleton idea here because the change to the date settings in this release is going to mess up javascript that's been in place for years at a number of institutions to disable teachers from changing dates.
I hate to ask for quick changes or a delay of a change again, but the lack of permissions around course dates has been a thorn in our side for years, and the change here just pushed that thorn in even further. I do like the new interface, just wish it could potentially be delayed until some kind of permission or setting can be added on the back-end so it's not up to awesome people like @James to help us hack the system to fit our institutional needs!
-Chris
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@chriscas the scope of this change was to simplify the interface, not overhaul how the functionality works. Our product team is aware of the request to lock down changing availability dates and may be included in a future release.
@straussi this is only an interface change; APIs are not affected.
Thanks,
Erin
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Some cool things coming out, here, like reassign.
Question: in the update for Rich Content Editor>File Preview Enhancements
I don't see the option to completely disable the preview in the screenshots.
For myself, I don't care one way or the other whether the preview is in an overlay or inline--it's still a preview, so this is all pretty much "Do you want a hollow-core door or a solid wood door?" I don't care. As long as I can get in the room, we're really just talking about quality and finish.
But being able to completely disable the inline preview? That's substantively different functionality. That's being able to lock this door, and make people go around to another door to get in.
Please tell me we'll still be able to disable the inline preview. Sometimes we want students to open a file, but sometimes we want them to download the file and do things with it. Preventing online view options reinforces that mandate.
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Hi @erinhmcmillan ,
I know the date change issue is just a UI overhaul from Instructure's perspective. What I'm hoping to do is raise awareness that what seems like a simple UI improvement to engineers is actually much more than that to the many institutions who have put javascript in place to disable the functionality for teachers on our own. I know Instructure doesn't support custom JS, but so many of us had to go that route because we couldn't get a permission added either. As I said before, I think the new UI is much better, it's just incredibly difficult to customize with javascript like the old UI is, and it's going to cause a lot of issues for people. I know permissions aren't ever easy things, but I'd really encourage the team to not roll this change out until a permission to control the dates is available so that a bunch of institutions policies and practices are not negatively impacted by this UI change.
-Chris
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On the assignment webcam update, this is welcomed change that will help math instructors. I tested this with the current assignment interface and with the new assignment enhancements. I don't see this option with assignment enhancements. Am I missing something? Why are you adding a new feature to the old interface and not the new interface?
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Love the new permission granularity options, but I have to agree with others we also handle the course dates by our BCM that pushes the courses over to Canvas every term and also handles all our dates and terms. We have JS that option out for faculty to change dates and disable the option for faculty to remove the "Students can only participate in the course between these dates" . This would cause a lot of issues for us and probably more work for myself fixing all the courses. Having the option to turn this off in the UI permission would be game changer.
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@Chris_Hofer our engineers have an open ticket to address the behavior with modules and new quizzes.
Thanks,
Erin
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@snugent good question. Not everyone is using assignment enhancements as it is still in a beta state and being developed; it will eventually be added there as well.
Thanks,
Erin
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@dgrobani @Chris_Hofer Yes… I’m concerned about the same thing.
- In our Production instance (PROD), Teacher, TA, and Designer roles do NOT have permission to add students.
- In BETA, the permissions are ON.
Permissions to add/remove students is off
Permissions to add/remove students is on
How can I make sure the permissions are OFF on March 20?
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I love the webcam submission! In fact, I love it so much, I'd love to see this functionality added to Classic and New Quizzes so students can do file upload question submissions via webcam.
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re:course date settings, if Term is selected, the UI should display what those dates are.
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Several very nice updates here - we are especially appreciative of the more granular roles update. We do not allow instructors to add students and they often try to by-pass this restriction by adding people as observers; we can finally remove that as an option without needing to resort to our override file. We echo other's concern about the default permission when this goes live.
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Re: File Preview Enhancements in RCE
Does this work with Office and Google documents added as links via the integration? What happens on these occasions?
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@James
James, is there a way to target the Course/Term drop down and disable or hide it?
I like the grey out option, but if they change the drop down from Course to Term and back again, then the options to change the dates become available.
Ideally, I would like to just hide the drop down so they can not change it and then I think we would be set.
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An initial look shows that you can find the input by using the selector #availability_options_container input[role=button]
However, there is some messy HTML here and you'll need to do the same thing about backing up 8 spans, a label, and then another span. You cannot do that through CSS, it would require JavaScript.
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@Chris_Hofer I am seeing the same thing you are. I don't want new quizzes to show up on the module page if they have not turned it on in the course settings. Also, new quizzes is checked by default. This will be confusing to instructors who have not yet turned on new quizzes.
New quizzes showing in Modules
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@erinhmcmillan, your response to @Chris_Hofer and me leads me to think we didn't communicate clearly the issue with user permissions. @Sylvia_Ami did an excellent job of clarifying and illustrating it.
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Thanks! I am currently working in beta. I used your script above and it does grey out the boxes. I also just did a hide of
$('.cCAhm_bGBk').hide();
so that it hides the drop down box for the Courses or Terms.
"edit" - we are setting the existing production check box of Students can only participate in the course between these dates - to be checked (via an api call to set variable "restrict_enrollments_to_course_dates" to true and so we won't have the issue with the dates.
3 questions: - "edited" - we figured out all 3 of our questions and a solution for them.
Sorry for the bother.
@Chris_Hofer - thanks for the tip 🙂
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Using $('.cCAhm_bGBk').hide(); is absolutely not a sustainable way to do this. Those codes are automatically generated by React and they can (and do) change from release to release (or perhaps when CSS is changed). There are horror stories of people early on who tried that, just to find out it broke the next month.
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We do not allow our faculty to change dates, this is all imported data from our Banner system. I have the start and end date disabled from a script I have found on another form from @James . I would love to still have the dates visible but greyed out so that faculty cannot change the option from course and term or change the end date of the course.
My only option so far is to hide the entire field instead
$('#availability_options_container').hide();
This will be a problem as our faculty will be asking to see those dates but it would be worse if they can change dates instead of being able to see them. I feel this would be a simpler fix if Devs just added a checkbox to allow or disable this option in settings or permissions.
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New Quizzes should only be available to add as a new item in Modules IF the New Quizzes feature is turned on. I'm experiencing the same thing as @Chris_Hofer and @snugent . New Quizzes is turned off in my subaccount and in the course (in Beta). But I was able to add a new Quiz from Modules.
Should we submit a support case?
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Permissions
Now in Beta I'm seeing the "old" permission listed below the new permission. Will the "old" permission disappear after the new release on 3/20/2021? I don't remember seeing the old permission listed with the new granular permission (see image below).
There's still the problem of some permissions that are disabled in Production are appearing as enabled in Beta (see the image below). This really concerns me. We use a SIS to enroll students and I don't want Teachers being able to add or remove students from their courses. 😕
Beta: Permissions, Users - Students is enabled
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@Sylvia_Ami I see what you see in beta. This would be really troubling if they keep both.
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Circling back to the course date enhancement. Can we please put this behind a temporary featured option? While the notes say it will only affect new courses, its hard to be 100% sure without testing it in production.
The feature appears to be replacing the check box "Students can only participate in the course between these dates". I love the new look but the default to "Term" dates is concerning. We automatically extend all course dates past the default term date and check that box programmatically. How does this feature work with SIS import course creation? If we have set start and end dates will it default to "Courses" instead of term?
Again, I think its a great idea but this is way bigger than an "enhancement" in my opinion its a major change.
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New Quizzes
The behavior with New Quizzes in Modules is being corrected by our engineers.
Permission: User Granularity
The granular user permissions will be correct in your production environment on March 20. I've added a note to the user granularity section above outlining such. To match the permissions you currently have in your production environment required a backend migration that was not done for the beta environment. However, it will be done for the production environment on March 20.
Thanks,
Erin
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@erinhmcmillan Thank you for acting on this so quickly. When the engineers correct the New Quizzes in Modules behavior, will it be posted here or somewhere? Or will it happen with this Saturday's update (3/13)?
I'm glad to hear that the granular permissions will match the production settings.
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Yes, @erinhmcmillan, thanks so much for clarifying that the granular user permissions will be correct in the production environment.
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I checked using the beta instance. If you use a SIS import and specify dates for the course, then it selects Courses. The default of term is because if you don't specify course dates, then it defaults to term dates.
In the current production release, there is a lot of confusion about how the dates work. You also had to check the box so students can only participate in the course between these dates or the dates you had there were not the correct dates and it used the term dates, but you didn't know what the term dates were because they weren't shown.
I agree that the new layout is terrible to manipulate because of the ReactJS nonsense structure, but overall, it's a vast improvement for the majority of the end users.
We want our teachers to be able to change the dates to open the course early or handle an incomplete, so it is good for us. I realize that not all schools operate that way and had been relying on custom JavaScript to make it happen.
One way to force the dates you want is to do a nightly import of the dates from the SIS and makes sure that you set the parameters to override the UI. Then the instructors can change them, but they will get changed back. If the instructor keeps changing them, they will keep getting changed back. The instructor will tire before an automated task will. This is where you have a conversation with them about the importance of leaving them the way the school sets them.
I notice that @erinhmcmillan wrote that they are changing the way things are done with next month's release notes and there's a comment that release notes are not the place to make feature enhancements. Personally, I think it's hard to say "this is a bad idea and shouldn't be done" without allowing someone to explain why it's a bad idea and suggest ways that it might be done better. I don't know exactly what she has planned, but it looks like there is going to be a separate Q&A for each feature and that's where they want the discussion to happen. It doesn't sound like it will have the impact that it does now. They want us to individually contact support if things don't function the way they are described, but doesn't mention where there is a place to share the concerns of this is a bad idea in a way that Canvas will take notice. I really hope it doesn't mean that by the time it gets to the release notes that it's too late to do anything about it.
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For Course Availability Date Enhancements, it would be great to include what the Term dates actually are for our specific institutions. While we communicate this information out to our faculty, among the millions of other things we regularly communicate out that they need to keep track of, it would be nice to have them see it in context with the actual course settings. Especially now that they would have this simpler option to select Term vs. Course.
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I know we're all concerned about the nightmares around course dates that may arise. BUT...
The change in how previews are handled has some potentially significant issues for faculty and students. For some reason, the current code is adding a download icon to external resource links (this is a link to a Canvas guide):
icon for downloading on Canvas Guides link
If you try to follow the download icon, rather than the link text, it errors out.
Here's the HTML that generates this condition (I didn't do anything in the HTML editor to this--it's exactly the same code in Prod, but no weird download link, and I used the RCE tools to create the link in the first place)
HTML showing "inline_disabled" in the <a> class
I'm really hoping that this is bad code that just needs to be fixed, because I can't see the reasoning behind this. If there is one, I'd love it if someone would share.
-----------------------------------------------------------
The disable inline preview option is no longer available for files in the RCE:
Production:
Production Link Options flyout with "Disable inline preview" option
Beta:
Beta Link Options flyout with no options to disable the inline preview
Again, no idea why this is going away.
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I cannot emphasize enough how MUCH the change in the course date "enhancement" is going to break things for us at our institution. Without the ability to either limit teachers' ability to change course dates (through a permission setting) or use JS to hide the course dates, the LMS admins' work (to fix dates in courses) will become a major nightmare. PLEASE have your engineers revisit this issue!
Lisa
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Love the reassign option. Can you have this sent to the students when they get reassigned? https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/da117cf1-32ab-4d86-979f-2b96d6d8f8c4 😄
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Just to add to the availability dates discussion. I have used custom CSS for since about 2014 to hide this from our faculty. There may be more elegant ways of doing this but I thought I would share what I am planning on implementing after this update. I am basically hiding the entire field for selecting the participation type and dates using the following:
/*Hides the open/close date options under the Course Settings page to prevent faculty from changing them */
.coursesettings #availability_options_container {
display: none;
}
If I happen to need to modify a date, I use the developer tools within Chrome to remove my line of code. This will then reveal the dates and allow me to edit them.
Here is a video of what I am planning on doing.
https://mediaspace.uab.edu/media/Hiding+course+dates/1_0fzhi85a
I understand that this may not work for everyone and may not even be a best practice, but it has worked for me. If anyone wants to build off of this, please feel free.
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The changes to course dates is really a step backwards. For institutions using course dates without restrictions and having blank values for term dates (as entering dates will automatically restrict participation...) the new UI will meaninglessly only display... "Participation: Term"?
The start and end date of the course are information carriers by themselves, with or without restrictions. Course dates and whatever participation settings apply should be displayed separately.
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The reassign feature is very welcome but it really misses the point when new due date can't be assigned in the same process. In the current form it basically means that "you can now reassign work to a student, if said student have chosen to use the List View Dashboard and is not currently on the app", right?
Reassigning work should allow for new due date, trigger a new to-do item for the student and the status history of the submission (late, missing, graded etc.) should be kept per each reassignment.
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RCE File Preview "Enhancements"
Wow @tom_gibbons, thanks for catching this. I get the error as well (see "Page Not Found" image below).
- Why is there a download icon for links that go to websites? I would think it should only appear for links to files.
- In addition to the error, the download icon also makes it hard for the text to flow (see example below).
- The download icons only appear for links that were added after this "enhancement." Is that how it will behave in production?
In the example below, the first two links were already on this page in Beta. Then I added two more links (with the red “X” marks). Notice how the download icons were added only for the new links.
2 new links have download icon
When I tested this, I inserted a link to Instructure’s website. When I clicked on the download icon, I got the error shown below. At least this experiment gave me an opportunity to see a fun error message. I like the part about, “You’re not really in trouble.”
Instructure’s Page Not Found error
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This "participation" change is huge for us as well. We've been using javascript to disable the date-pickers. This is now broken in beta and there doesn't seem to be a good way, yet, to disable it again.
I know a lot of us have been asking for this to be a permission for many years and while often acknowledged by Instructure, nothing has ever been done about it.
I add my voice to those asking for a delay on this "enhancement" so there can be more discussion about it. You can't just drop this huge change on us with such short notice and no work-around.