Discussions Redesign Coming to Canvas LMS on July 20, 2024!

[SamGarza1]

We've been working tirelessly to enhance the Canvas experience, and we're delighted to announce that the long-anticipated Discussions Redesign will be enforced on July 20, 2024!

In our continuous effort to provide you with the best tools for collaboration and communication, we recognized that the discussion feature is at the heart of many online learning experiences. To ensure that your discussions are more engaging, user-friendly, and efficient, we have revamped this crucial aspect of Canvas LMS. And with inline/split view being enabled in Discussions Redesign on October 25, which allows users to switch between an inline or split viewing experience, we feel confident that we've addressed user concerns and made the discussion redesign a better experience. 

We believe these changes will improve the way you collaborate and interact within the Canvas platform. Whether you're an educator looking to facilitate engaging class discussions or a student eager to participate actively, this update will make your Canvas experience more enjoyable and productive.

What does this mean for users though? The discussion redesign includes an updated UI and new features. When the redesign is enforced all existing discussions will show in the new UI and will have new functionality available to them. No migration necessary. 

More information on features and functionality can be found in the feature group, this blog, and the change log. We want to ensure a smooth transition, so stay tuned for more information and resources as we approach the enforcement date.

The enforcement dates for the Discussions Redesign are:

Beta: June 17, 2024

Production: July 20, 2024

This doesn’t mean we’re done working on discussions though. Upcoming features that will be added to the redesign before it's enforced include:

Edit History (Available in production November 8): When a user edits a submitted discussion reply, instructors can view the different versions.

Updated Create/Edit: General UI updates to match the look and feel of other areas of Canvas and to ensure accessibility. 

Checkpoints: Allows instructors to set two due dates for discussions; providing greater clarity to students on when initial responses and replies are due. 

We're committed to evolving Canvas to meet the needs of our vibrant and growing community. Your feedback has been instrumental in shaping this redesign, and we can't wait to see the positive impact it will have. If you have any suggestions on resources or information that would like to see to make you feel more confident in this change, please let me know in the comments below. 

[kailey]

In case others are interested, I've documented Stanford's list of Discussions Redesign findings. The list includes bugs, loss of functionality, general feedback, etc. I will continue to update the spreadsheet to track progress for the issues, but no guarantee it'll be the most up-to-date information. I included a 'Last Updated' message near the top so the information is accurate as of the last updated date. I will attempt to update the spreadsheet as the cases progress.

[vanzandt]

Hi Sam, I'm sorry if I missed your response to this and missed it, but I wanted to follow up to see if these video resources have been created and if you could provide links. These would be incredibly helpful as we work with our institutions to pilot or transition to the new tool before it is enforced.

Previously...

"vanzandt Community Champion ‎01-03-2024 11:35 AM

Hi @SamGarza1 , I wanted to check to see if your team was able to complete the videos, especially the comparison video.  If so, can you provide a link here to help us find them?  Thank you!"

" SamGarza1 Instructure  ‎12-01-2023 03:50 PM

Hi @Jeff_F , 

Thanks for asking this in the community! The page you linked is primarily there to serve as an overview. You can find more detailed guides for instructors and students in the overall community guides and they should all be up to date. 

Our team is also working on overview and comparison videos and will have those available in the next 1-2 weeks. "

[vanzandt]

Hi @SamGarza1 , I wanted to check to see if your team was able to complete the videos, especially the comparison video.  If so, can you provide a link here to help us find them?  Thank you!"

[vanzandt]

Hi @Jeff_F , 

Thanks for asking this in the community! The page you linked is primarily there to serve as an overview. You can find more detailed guides for instructors and students in the overall community guides and they should all be up to date. 

Our team is also working on overview and comparison videos and will have those available in the next 1-2 weeks. "

[hesspe]

I commend the Stanford's list of Discussions Redesign findings for its thoroughness, but I think some of its assertions are subjective.  I'm only taking the time to reply here because I think some may take the length of the list to suggest that the Redesign is in much rougher shape than I actually think that it is.  Also do note that several of the more egregious bugs are labeled as "Fixed."

Some examples of places where my view may diverge from that of the folks who made up the list:

- I see no reason to insist that checkpoints be available before the enforcement date, since there is nothing like that anywhere in Canvas now

- I think the fact that reported reply defaults to on, obviates the concern that it is not available at the account level.  I was getting the notifications well before I even realized there was a setting.

- It's interesting that author names are not hyperlinked, but not something I will miss.  When I want to act as a student, that is never the route I take.  @mentions, on the other hand are a real enhancement.

- This one may be more controversial, but I think limiting the level of replies to 2 is a usability enhancement.  It also brings the redesign more in line with social media posts that most students are used to.

- It is true that the boxes made it slightly easier to distinguish between conversations, but boy (IMO) did they make for an ugly presentation.

- I do miss the ability to mark a post as read or unread with a click, but Sam explained that there was an accessibility issue with that interface, and I credit the designers with their affirmitive commitment to to accessibility.

Several of the other concerns I think are valid, and I do hope they are resolved before enforcement, but we don't see them as "stoppers" and we will go ahead and enforce the redesign for our next term, regardless of what Canvas decides to do, unless something more serious arises.

[Charles_Barbour]

For the life of me, I can't understand why a company chooses to set an arbitrary date for mandatory enforcement of a product redesign so far in advance. (Especially when so much of the customer testing and design work remains undone.) It's clear Instructure is trying to move quickly while also meeting deadlines but given the ongoing customer testing and design refinement, I'm curious about the thought process behind setting such an ambitious mandatory enforcement date.

We're < 5 months from the mandatory release date and we're still ironing out bugs and enhancing functionality. It's been amazing to see the impact of our community's testing and feedback.

Looking forward, it seems we might have about 3 months where the product could be in a good place for faculty to start comfortably integrating it into their courses. But I doubt many faculty are interested in switching in the middle of the semester.

This leads me to wonder if there's a possibility to run the new and current versions in parallel for a bit longer. If there are no technical limitations, this could give users more time to test, provide feedback, and transition at their own pace, while also giving you the opportunity to perfect the new design.

It seems the current process is:

• Release product to beta in an unfinished state with a firm release date
• Force customers to do testing in a short time frame
• Provide very little time for faculty testing and instruction

This approach asks a lot of your users and doesn't seem very supportive. Do you see this becoming a common practice for future updates?

[hesspe]

I'm afraid I've just drunk the Kool-Aid.  I can't see depriving our community of the benefits of the redesign while waiting for all of the rough edges to be sanded off.  Most recently I'm impressed by the creative way the very vexing problem of making readable an extended threaded discussion is handled.  There is a limit of three levels of reply: you can reply to someone else's reply, and a third person can reply to yours.   For replies below that third level,  the thread is traceable with automatic @mentions.  How this will work out in practice still remains to be see, but it seems to me like a very clever hack and one I have not seen elsewhere.

[hesspe]

I will add one sour note though.  The need to refresh the browser page to see changes (including likes, edits, and even replies) MUST be fixed AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. @SamGarza1 please can you give us an idea of when this will be done?

UPDATE:  I now see that this is listed on the Known Issues page as [OPEN] Discussion Redesign inline view does not load content changes until page is refreshed, with the notation "Engineers are currently investigating the issue."

As the original post indicates, this is a big concern for me and one that will bear on my advice relative to when we "turn on" Discussions Redesign.  I would appreciate a progress report that is more specific than "Engineers are currently investigating the issue."

[cdoherty]

@hesspe Keeping this new design as a feature option doesn't deprive the community of anything. Those that want to use it, can. Those that want a large amount of bugs to be fixed before it's enforced can wait. The enforcement of a feature that is not ready is the problem.

[hesspe]

@cdoherty  Absolutely (when I said our community I meant our campus community not all of Canvas).  We made the decision to enforce in mid-May, unless something scary emerges in the interim.  If Instructure does postpone the enforcement date, then we will transition all of our sites, but give people the option to revert if they so request.

[TrinaAltman]

I would prefer an end-of-year enforcement date minimally. That would give us the chance to promote it to summer courses (now that some of the issues are being worked through, and hopefully with Checkpoints in place as well by then). Instructors could try it if they wanted. Then we could possibly enable it by default for Fall courses, but still give instructors the option to revert to the old design if the Discussion Redesign is problematic for them - with the understanding it would be enforced at the end of the year. The main drawback is students could see two different discussion designs across various courses, but I suspect most instructors would just leave whatever default we set. But that would give instructors fair warning and a chance to try the tool in summer, and an option to back out in the fall if they find they need to rethink how they were doing things, before it is enforced. As it stands now, we'd have to turn it on for all summer courses in May to avoid a change during the stressful end of our summer term.

[Sylvia_Ami]

Any idea when the checkpoint feature will be available? The Canvas Product Roadmap shows Q2-Q3 2024. I hope it's ready before the July 20 date. I really - really hope it's ready by June 1, 2024 because our district is enabling the Discussion Redesign feature before our Summer term begins. I was in a faculty meeting just now and I told them about the checkpoint feature - they all clapped👏. So if that feature is ready soon, it might help people have a more positive attitude on the timing.

[ClaytheniaPound]

I am new to the Canvas community.  I found the discussions to be very informative about the Redesign Coming to Canvas LMS in July 2024.  I appreciate each person's honest feedback as I explore Canvas in depth.

It is encouraging to know that concerns and/or suggestions for improvements are truly acknowledged and acted upon with links that provide a resource to all it may impact.

[mwolfenstein]

To pick up on @Sylvia_Ami's comment, we were told when the July enforcement date was announced that checkpoints would be released in Q1. Now, with no formal announcement it seems like that release date is pushed back to Q2 or even Q3 after the enforcement date. I've been telling my faculty that checkpoints would be available in Q1 as per the communication from Instructure, and the only reason I've felt confident with regard to the enforcement date is that I had some assurance that the redesign would be feature complete at least 3 months before the enforcement date.

To put it simply, continuing to stand by an enforcement date of the new version when it has bugs that have in some cases not been acknowledged and when a key feature that was announced at CanvasCon in, I believe 2021, and will at best be added right before the enforcement date without time to evaluate bugs and issues in live use cases is not acceptable. It feels similar to how the roll out for quizzes.next/New Quizzes has gone.

Obviously it's fine to push back release on the checkpoints feature. Nobody wants it pushed into production if it's not ready. However, since it's one of the most requested features of all time on this site, and is a key feature of the redesign that was promised in the CanvasCon announcement and in the initial post here about the redesign, it seems necessary to communicate more explicitly about the development status and to push back that enforcement date so that there's time for early adopters to test out the feature in live use cases before the redesign is forced on all users.

[Sylvia_Ami]

How can I get a link to a specific post in the new discussion design? I can do it in the current/old design.

In the Dive into the Discussion Redesign with Our New Video! it mentions being able to quote previous replies. But this is only for the current discussion. I want to be able to get a URL to a specific post in another discussion in my course. How do I do that?

Use case: In the Module 2 discussion, I want to link to a specific post I made in Module 1. There could be over 50 posts in Module 1 and I don't want to make students try and find one specific post. I want a URL to that one specific post in Module 1, then link to it from Module 2.

In the current (soon to be "old") discussion design, I could use the Search box to display the post I need, then in the search results, I would right click on View in discussion, then click on Copy Link (see the two screenshots below).

This gives me the URL to the one specific post in Module 1. Then in Module 2, I insert the link to Module 1's post. 😊

But when I try the same thing in the new discussion design, I right click on Go to Reply the browser doesn't give me the option to copy the link (see the screen shot below). 😥

Any suggestions?

[hesspe]

It's not clear to me why not search out the Module 1 post to be cited, copy the relevant text, and paste in the Module 2 discussion.  The seeming advantage there is that it maintains engagement with the current discussion, rather than re-focusing the student on the earlier one.  I'm interested in understanding if this represents a very particular use-case or a more serious short-coming.

[Sylvia_Ami]

Thanks for asking this question @hesspe . In most cases, I can see how it would be better to keep students in the current discussion and just repeat the part from the other discussion. Perhaps one could say it's laziness on the part of the instructor - it's easier to get the URL and link to the other discussion's post rather than repeat what was said. However, there are some times when there are other relevant and important posts surrounding the one post in the other discussion. By linking to the other discussion's post, the instructor is hoping the student will increase their learning by seeing the post in context of the surrounding posts. I guess "hoping" is the operative word.

[ClaytheniaPound]

I am new to the Canvas community.  I found the discussions to be very informative about the Redesign Coming to Canvas LMS in July 2024.  I appreciate each person's honest feedback as I explore Canvas in depth.

It is encouraging to know that concerns and/or suggestions for improvements are truly acknowledged and acted upon with links that provide a resource to all it may impact.

[DaGIFT222]

@ClaytheniaPound  I agree with you. I have been on canvas for only a few months now, and it has been a great experience. The discussions are very insightful and full of context. Glad your a new panda. Welcome!

GIFT

[rlbrown21]

The ONLY feature our faculty cares about is Checkpoints.   Otherwise, they have no interest in change for the sake of change.    Each person who has tried the new redesign has been underwhelmed.  Without checkpoints, we treat this as just another annoying update, gaining no real benefits, just visual changes.   Still waiting for "new quizzes" to get the rest of the base functionality of "classic quizzes".  DO NOT FORCE THIS ON US IF IT IS NOT READY

[nicole_fleetwoo]

@rlbrown21 - I couldn't agree with you more.  I have grown tired of being raked over the coals for decisions I cannot control. Instructure doesn't have to take the heat for rolling things out prematurely, we as the admins supporting their product get to deal with the repercussions of their decisions.  When we roll this out later this quarter, because we don't want the switch flipped mid-summer quarter, I plan on telling folks if they're unhappy with it to contact Instructure.  I will provide them with a link to the ticketing system.  I am not taking the heat for this one - not when the only reason we'd flip the switch isn't available and there's no guarantee they'll make their revised date of the end of Q2.  Sorry, I am very frustrated at this point because I know major pushback is coming my way from our faculty if Checkpoints aren't available and I am not looking forward to it.  Discussions Redesign is starting to give off New Quizzes vibes - just get it out there and we'll fix it later. (I apologize if I offended anyone with my frustration.) 

[govreacl]

Agreed - change for the sake of change isn't worth anything to us - we need checkpoints! Stop wasting time on making it look good and give us the features we have been begging for.

[leward]

@SamGarza1 ,  

This is a long meandering discussion and I haven't found the exact posts, but I recall that you hoped to address several Discussions Redesign shortcomings identified by community members before July 20.  One such issue was the missing activity summary for group discussions.  The legacy tool gives reply and unread counts for each group, which helps instructor gauge student engagement in each group.

This issue was partially address in the 4/10 release (Discussions/Announcements Redesign: Release Change Log).  I was very pleased to see Groups dropdown now shows the unread count for each group, but I was expecting to see the reply count as well.   Are there plans to add the reply count to a future release?  The unread count is a definite improvement, but the reply count is an equally important data point for instructors.

[TrinaAltman]

I just added a comment on the Discussion Checkpoints Feature Update post pointing out that when the enforcement date was announced in this post I am now commenting on, it was stated that Checkpoints would be added to the redesign before it is enforced. The enforcement date has persisted even though this significant piece of functionality (the one that would get our faculty more excited about having to change) was delayed. 

[TrinaAltman]

Like some (many?) other schools, we are now preparing to enable the Discussion Redesign tool by default in May in advance of the start of our summer term. We don't have any other option if we want to avoid an interface change of a major tool during the term.

As we prepare resources for our users, I am concerned that in documentation it is still referenced as beta, preview, etc. E.g.,

How do I use Discussions Redesign as an instructor? and How do I create a discussion using Discussions Redesign as an instructor? both state "Discussions Redesign is currently a beta feature. Some discussion settings and features in the classic Discussions interface may not function or be available in Discussions Redesign."

The recently released two-page Discussion Redesign summary seems to indicate the Redesign has reached parity and beyond with the classic Discussion tool in the chart that is provided.

@SamGarza1 can these pages (and any others that are similar) be updated (hopefully very soon!) to remove these beta references (unless they are still true, in which case, the redesign shouldn't be enforced). We are in a tough spot otherwise telling our users we are enabling the redesign by default even though it is in beta still.......

Also on Canvas Release: Discussions/Announcements Redesign (the main summary page I know of we can point to for an explanation of the changes), Mobile Support states "This feature is not yet available in the Canvas Mobile apps. Please see the Product Roadmap for upcoming updates when available." Is that still true? If so, when will it be available in the mobile app? I couldn't find anything on the product roadmap related to this, though I may have just missed it. If it is still true, it also seems to be a major gap in parity with the classic Discussion tool, so I hope this page just needs updating.

Related, will all instructor and student documention related to discussions and announcements in Canvas Community be updated to reflect the Redesign interface on July 20th when the change is enforced?

Thank you,

Trina

[nicole_fleetwoo]

I was just looking at the 2024 Discussion Redesign PDF  shared by @TrinaAltman - 

According to the handout...

With the redesign, Canvas Discussions
helps through:
• Cleaner UI for accessibility
• Flexible viewing options, including inline and split view
• Reply reporting with notifications to instructors
• Quoting functionality
• Improved search with highlighting
• Full and partial anonymous graded Discussions
• Additional sorting and filtering options for users

When I select any form of anonymity for a discussion it gives me this message:

 

Am I missing something? 

[DarrylEvans]

Hi @nicole_fleetwoo,

As implemented, anonymous discussions will not work with a graded discussion or with a group discussion.

[rlbrown21]

It is so clear that this is not ready for enforcement.  My biggest concern is that we turn it on at the end of spring term, then Canvas changes the enforcement last minute and decides not to enforce it, making us who support it look bad again (look at you new quizzes).  Can we PLEASE get enforcement turned off until we have a good reason to adopt it?   We have shown new discussions to faculty and not one person uses it at our campus.

[dkpst5]

I don't see how you can say it's not ready for enforcement?

It totally is. It's a simple drop-in replacement of existing Discussions without loss of feature (except the noted group discussion count). Because further future updates are already planned does not mean it's not ready. It's just that we know more good things are coming (that don't currently exist in what it's replacing).

This is not at all like e.g. New Quizzes that's still (even today) missing major features that schools rely on for even basic functionality.

[rlbrown21]

I will be as clear as I can.  There has been ONE feature asked for all the 10 years we have been using Canvas.  Not just our school, but the majority of schools.  Checkpoints (multiple due dates).  Without checkpoints, I cannot be convinced this should be enforced.  Leave it as an option for schools to enforce (or not) until the majority of schools are using it.

I guess I just don't trust Canvas to actually add this feature they have been promising for so very long (just like new quizzes).

[dkpst5]

Check points is a future new feature they're working on. We will be getting it. But it is a future new feature that doesn't (and shouldn't) impact deployment of Discussions Redesign or enforcement of it. Yes, it'd be an even easier easier sell if it were already there, but you can still tell people during your contacts during roll-out of this that it will be coming soon, in part because of the Discussions Redesign project.

Our teachers are PUMPED about the new stuff already and are very excited that there's even more coming in the future.

Any delay in enforcement would likely mean another year (or at least 4 months) of deferral because of academic years, which is not necessary or good.

EDIT: I understand the burn you feel on NQ. We feel it too and are still almost exclusively Classic. Fortunately, Discussions Redesign isn't like that with tons of missing/gutted features and a major functionality change and all that. It's tight, focused -- and I hope a better example of the newer direction of Instructure. NQ is tuck with design decisions they made early (making it an LTI was a mistake).

[degensp28]

It sounds like this is a good fit for your community, and I am glad that you have the choice to implement it. For many of us, without Checkpoints, we are receiving the feedback that this is just change for the sake of change.

[mwolfenstein]

I mostly agree with @dkpst5 on this one. Unlike New Quizzes/quizzes.next the Discussions/Announcements Redesign in its current state does not have significant loss of functionality. Checkpoints are also on deck for release before the enforcement date, and we've been told the reason they've been pushed back is because it's a functionality that Instructure realized has important implementation in other aspects of Canvas (I'm looking at you Peer Review).

I will say that my main concern that is aligned with @rlbrown21's stance is that there's still no clear resolution on how sorting by post date works. I will assert strongly that the current implementation (automatically resorting by post activity instead of sticking with original post date) will be a major problem for faculty attempting to engage uniformly with student posts in discussions, and that as I've stated elsewhere in this community that sorting this way actually undermines the functionality of sort by new. I'm personally unclear if this functionality is working as intended from Instructure's perspective, but I think it's pretty essential to have sort by post date function based on the original post and not recent activity before the enforcement date. Otherwise there will definitely be a non-trivial number of very unhappy teacher users.

I would love to also see a functionality for sorting by most recent activity. It's a common enough feature on other platforms, and it doesn't seem like it would be a huge lift to offer us both.

Finally, I think the issue @TrinaAltman raised about mobile is also pretty essential, but TBH, the mobile apps are so dysfunctional that I've personally given up on expecting them to meet user needs any time soon. The best I can do is tell my faculty to tell their students to avoid the apps in most use cases because of the many ways in which they are unable to meet user needs. We know that our students use these apps heavily anyway, but I'm still doing my best to help our campus guide students away from them because of how bad they continue to be.

Edit: One more thing, the @ tag feature is really fantastic. I'm not sure why it wasn't on the list of new features, but frankly if folks think that the redesign is just a visual change without checkpoints, highlight the @ tag feature for them. It's a legit game changer.

[hesspe]

Quoting  @TrinaAltman: "Like some (many?) other schools, we are now preparing to enable the Discussion Redesign tool by default in May in advance of the start of our summer term."

We are one of the "other schools" that Trina alludes to, and I share her concerns.  I'm sure you are aware that while, for you, the July 20th date may seem a comfortable 3 months in the future, for some of us (May 18th is our cut-over date) zero hour is drawing uncomfortably close.  

Far as I can tell, there has been no communication from Canvas (@SamGarza1 ) in this topic areasince the initial post way back on Halloween.  I know Sam has posted about the redesign elsewhere, but this topic seems like a good central location for regular updates as the cutover date approaches.  (Or if not here, where might we look for updates?)

 What are the chances?

Thanks!

[dbrace]

My institution also believes that mandatory enforcement of the redesign should be delayed.

Something else to keep-in-mind related to this is this policy in the Canvas Community:

taken from another blog post

The content in this blog is over six months old, and the comments are closed. For the most recent product updates and discussions, you're encouraged to explore newer posts from Instructure's Product Managers.

This specific blog post was originally made on 2023-10-31 and we are approaching that threshold.

[afurr0026]

@TrinaAltman 

From what I can tell from the following Mobile Release Notes, Discussions/Announcements Redesign is supported in the Canvas Teacher and Student apps. 

• Canvas Student Release Notes (iOS 7.1) - 2/5/2024
• Canvas Student Release Notes (Android 7.0) - 11/22/2023
• Canvas Teacher Release Notes (iOS 1.24) - 2/5/2024
• Canvas Teacher Release Notes (Android 1.27) - 11/29/2023

I haven't been able to locate this info anywhere else. I just happened to stumble across it when I was trying to update some resources for our faculty. 

[dkpst5]

I had a colleague test Discussions Redesign on mobile (iOS) with her student account and it did appear to view for her, including the option to post anonymously. I was surprised, since it was listed as a probably-not by Instructure.

[stimme]

@TrinaAltman , @afurr0026 , and @dkpst5 - 
When the Discussions Redesign was released to the mobile apps, I posted a suggestion in the user group for the feature:

Mobile app text size and color 

Please feel free to add comments about the implementation of the redesign in the mobile apps.

Not sure if @SamGarza1 has seen that suggestion.

[mwolfenstein]

Thanks for catching that @afurr0026. I think I don't subscribe to release notes for the mobile apps currently and when I checked as recently as a month ago they were still displaying as classic discussions. It's sad to say, but I just expect very little from the Canvas mobile apps. The fact that they don't display standard HTML elements like tabs and that accessibility on them is basically a nightmare has led me to avoid them as much as possible.

[TrinaAltman]

@afurr0026  - great find - thanks for passing it on!

@dkpst5 - excellent - thanks for the real-world example as proof!

It seems like the Mobile Support section on Canvas Release: Discussions/Announcements Redesign, just needs to be updated. Hopefully that will be done soon.