March 30, 2019 Canvas Updates

Starting March 30, 2019, Canvas will receive a number of improvements and updates as part of the regularly-scheduled upgrade cycle by Instructure. Updates are made regularly to bring new features, improve user experience, and fix bugs. Such updates do not typically result in downtime.

Highlights

  • Instructors can automatically receive notifications when a broken link is discovered in a course through student action. Links that are broken, un-published and unavailable due to role are reported.
  • SMS notifications are shorter. Only one message will be sent per course item, and direct URLs are removed.
    • Do you prefer receiving more robust notifications? Instructure recommends using Canvas mobile apps.

Additional updates

  • Several updates have been made to the Quizzes.Next tool. Please note that Quizzes.Next is not supported for general use. Before using Quizzes.Next, contact CETL or your school/college support.
    • Item banks can be searched.
    • Questions can be tagged to make it easier to find and re-use questions in item banks.
    • Instructors who selected to receive “All Submissions” notifications, will correctly receive Quizzes.Next notifications.
  • Rubrics updates:
    • Rubrics may be added from concluded courses.
    • Total scores are rounded to 4 decimal places

Future Changes

  • Final grade override will be enabled at a future date. This feature may be used to provide an adjusted grade for students in the New Gradebook.

Learn more

To learn more about this Canvas update, and to see how the changes may affect instructors’ and students’ work, refer to the audience-specific release note links.