November/December 2021 Release Summary

This is the latest information on changes to UWM’s Digital Learning Environment which includes changes to Canvas, Kaltura (a.k.a. My Media), Zoom, and other services available in Canvas.

Updates are made regularly to bring new features, improve the user experience, and fix bugs. For each item, the change date is provided. Release Summaries are used to communicate planned updates for the given month and may include updates which occurred after the previous update.

Service Maintenance

No maintenance is planned for these changes.

Major Changes

  • Canvas
    • November 10, 2021: New Quizzes – New Menu Link to Build in Assignments and Quizzes
    • November 20, 2021: New Comment Indicator for Student Assignments
    • November 20, 2021: Join Online Meetings from the Dashboard in List View
    • November 20, 2021: New Quizzes – Change the Location of Related Questions for Stimulus Questions
    • November 24-December 8, 2021: Student and Teacher Apps for Android and iOS – Support for Annotation Submission Type
    • December 15, 2021: New Analytics – Online Attendance Dashboard and Tracking
  • Kaltura (My Media, Classroom)
    • December 1, 2021: Automatic Machine Captioning of Video
  • Zoom
    • November 9, 2021: Advanced Polling

Canvas

November 20, 2021: New Quizzes – New Menu Link to Build in Assignments and Quizzes

Note: CETL and school/college support do not currently recommend using New Quizzes unless it is needed for specific question types or capabilities. Contact CETL or your school/college support for additional information; and continue using Classic Quizzes whenever possible.

The kabab (“three dots”) menu in Assignments and Quizzes allows instructors to jump directly to the Build page.

  • Before the change: Instructors must edit the New Quiz assessment, then click the Build button.
  • After the change: The Build option is available from the kabob menu.
  • How this affects teaching and learning: This quality-of-life change makes it easier for instructors to jump to the Build menu, by placing it in what many may find to be a more obvious location.

November 20, 2021: New Comment Indicator for Student Assignments

When students view assignment details, text indicators show when new feedback has been added as an annotation, or in a rubric.

  • Before the change: Students need to check assignments and rubrics for comments, or check Grades for feedback.
  • After the change: In addition, students can see the assignment details to quickly tell if feedback has been provided by the instructor.
  • How this affects teaching and learning: This quality-of-life change makes it easier for students to determine if feedback has been left by their instructor.

November 20, 2021: Join Online Meetings from the Dashboard in List View

When students or instructors view their Canvas Dashboard in list view (rather than the default Card view), meetings listed in current courses will have a “Join” button. Clicking the button will launch the scheduled Zoom meeting.

  • Before the change: Students need to visit a course, click Zoom, then click the Join button for the meeting.
  • After the change: Students using Dashboard List view can join scheduled Zoom meetings by clicking the “Join” button.
  • How this affects teaching and learning: This quality-of-life change makes it easier to join video conferences with fewer clicks for the student.

November 20, 2021: New Quizzes – Change the Location of Related Questions for Stimulus Questions

Note: CETL and school/college support do not currently recommend using New Quizzes unless it is needed for specific question types or capabilities. Contact CETL or your school/college support for additional information; and continue using Classic Quizzes whenever possible.

When adding a Stimulus question type, the associated questions can be adjusted to be placed below, or besides the Stimulus content presented to students.

  • Before the change: Questions associated with Stimulus question type appeared below associated content.
  • After the change: The instructor can change the Stimulus question to show associated questions to the right of the content.
  • How this affects teaching and learning: Depending on the nature of the stimulus/question relationship, instructors have the flexibility to change orientation to better relate the Stimulus content to the associated questions.

November 24-December 8, 2021: Student and Teacher Apps for Android and iOS – Support for Annotation Submission Type

The annotation question type is supported for both students and instructors. Instructors can view annotations, and students can submit annotation assignments using their mobile device.

  • Before the change: Annotation assignments were usable using the web interface.
  • After the change: Annotation assignments can be submitted by students using mobile devices.
  • How this affects teaching and learning: This change can have a significant impact for active learning, by providing students both mobility, and annotation functionality as part of an activity. This change also allows students who do not have access to desktop computers to more fully engage in completing course work using the technology available to them.

December 15, 2021: New Analytics – Online Attendance Dashboard and Tracking

The New Analytics tool Attendance tab is changed to Online Attendance with enhanced functionality that can guide instructors in determining whether a student has attended or participated in a Canvas course. The dashboard can track certain instructor-defined criteria, or instructors can disable the dashboard on a course-by-course basis.

IMPORTANT: Instructors should avoid relying on this tool to definitively determine a student’s participation in a Canvas course. This information can serve as guidance but should not be trusted exclusively to inform financial aid reporting requirements (a.k.a. F-week reporting). Review the Online Attendance Dashboard documentation and judge how this tool can aid on your overall participation assessment strategy for the course.

  • Before the change: Instructors need to manually analyze information through reports and the New Analytics interface.
  • After the change: A dashboard presents key data points based on the instructor’s preferences.
  • How this affects teaching and learning: This quality-of-life change makes it easier for instructors to gather information to identify at-risk students, and to make judgement calls on course pacing and intervention activities. Additionally, this adds a tool for instructors to determine a student’s overall participation in a course for financial aid reporting.

Instructors can choose all or some of the following criteria to report on the Online Attendance dashboard:

  • Course Access – Student visits any area of a course
  • Posts – Student makes a Discussion post, reply or Announcement post
  • Assignment – Completing an assignment submission
  • Conferences – NOT USED BY THE UW SYSTEM OR UWM
  • Pages – Student creates a page if wiki functionality is enabled for a course
  • Quizzes – Student starts taking or submits a classic quiz. New Quizzes is not yet supported.

It may take up to 24 hours for report information to be displayed.

Kaltura (My Media, Classroom)

December 1, 2021: Automatic Machine Captioning of Video

On December 1, UW System Administration enabled automatic captioning in Kaltura (integrated with Canvas as My Media). All videos uploaded to Kaltura (My Media, Kaltura Classroom) from December 1 onwards will be automatically machine captioned.

  • Before the change: Instructors need to request machine captioning for each video uploaded.
  • After the change: Videos are automatically captioned by machine learning technology, which provides a minimal captioning experience for students, and serves as a starting point for additional caption editing. Captions are visible by clicking the “CC” icon for a video, then clicking “English (autocaption)”.
  • How this affects teaching and learning: This change provides a similar student experience to viewing auto-captioned videos on YouTube or other video services. In some cases, the captions can be beneficial to the learning experience by making video content more closely aligned with universal design practices.

On-average, machine captions are 90% accurate. Clear speech using more common English will meet or exceed 90% accuracy. Discipline-specific language, or poor-quality audio is less likely to meet 90% accuracy.

The machine captioning service can only provide English captions at this time.

Video uploaded before the change are not automatically captioned. Instructors can request for un-captioned videos to be automatically captioned.

IMPORTANT: In most cases, machine captioning does not satisfy ADA requirements, and does not make a video WCAG 2.0-compliant. Instructors should assume that machine captioning needs to be edited to be accessible. Instructors can also delete captions if they are unwanted.

For additional information, or if you have questions, students should contact the UWM Help Desk. Instructors and administrators are welcome to contact CETL or your school/college support.

Zoom

November 9, 2021: Advanced Polling

Instructors and students using the newest desktop or mobile Zoom clients can interact using advanced poling during a meeting. Instructors can create matching, ranked choice, short answer, long answer, and multiple-choice questions. Instructors can set correct answers or solicit feedback.

  • Before the change: Instructors have the option of offering multiple choice questions to meeting participants.
  • After the change: Instructors have the option of offering multiple question types and can specific correct answers.
  • How this affects teaching and learning: This change increases the opportunities for instructors to solicit student responses during live presentations. Increasing student engagement during a course can have a measurable impact on student success.

To use this feature, presenters and participants must be using a current desktop or mobile Zoom client. Zoom advanced polling does not currently export grades or progress to the Canvas gradebook.

Additional Changes

  • Canvas
    • November 20, 2021: (Administrators only) Clicking through Settings tabs updates the browser address, allowing tabs to be bookmarked, accessed through history, and directly entered.
    • November 20, 2021: For text entry assignments, a word count is displayed in SpeedGrader.
    • November 24, 2021: Student Android App – Text entry submissions can be saved as drafts.
    • November 30, 2021: Student iOS App – The workflow for submitting files is changed. Students should open the file, then tap the Share icon. Then, select the Student app.
    • December 1, 2021: Publish and Unpublish buttons are in the Settings menu and appear the same as on the course homepage.
    • December 1, 2021: Gradebook settings are now a side bar panel, rather than a “pop-over” window.
    • December 15, 2021: To-Do items for instructors can open in a new browser tab. Instructors can change this behavior by visiting User Settings > Feature Options.
    • December 15, 2021: Late Policies are exported in course packages and can be imported or copied forward to new courses.
    • December 15, 2021: In the Rich Content Editor, images can be sized by percentages as well as pixels.
    • December 15, 2021: When viewing your Notification settings, a banner is shown indicating when messages will be delivered.
    • December 15, 2021: When importing a course, or copying an item to a new course, message warning of overwriting only show when something will actually be overwritten.
  • Kaltura (My Media, Classroom)
    • November 7, 2021: KMS GO for iOS – the video player has been updated to match the web and android interfaces.
  • Proctorio
    • November 1, 2021: New Quizzes support is available.
  • Zoom
    • November 29, 2021: (Android, iOS) High-definition video up to 720p can be sent when using your devices camera.
    • December 20, 2021: (Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS) Presenters can create, rename and remove breakout rooms after a meeting start.
    • December 20, 2021: (Windows, Mac, iOS for iPad) Gallery view layout can be saved and re-used

Learn More

To learn more about updates, and to see how the changes may affect instructors’ and students’ work, refer to the release note links. Remember that some features may not be enabled for UWM or the UW System.