Every month in Canvas Corner, we discuss the new features and enhancements available in Canvas. This month, we cover new quiz questions, the New Gradebook, and new ideas open for your voting.
New Quizzes
When using Numeric questions in Quizzes, the student an invalid input warning displays if a student responds to a numeric question with an invalid character. If a student continues and clicks the Submit button, a confirmation window displays informing the student an invalid answer has been received, and the student should change the answer to receive credit, but it is at the students discretion to cancel or continue submitting the quiz.
If the student cancels and returns to the numeric question, the warning text indicates that the answer must be a number and not include any symbols or units.
New Gradebook
Canvas has a new grade book available now (which can be enabled in course settings) and will be turned on for everyone campus-wide starting January 2, 2020. The New Gradebook functions very much like the current version, all current operations will be identical. It has a cleaner design to make it more consistent with other Canvas pages. Options and filters are consolidated in three pull-down menus and a settings menu.
The most notable and exciting feature set are the policies. The Grading policies allow you to set up rules that will deduct percentages of a grade based on how late the submission is. An example would be to set the late policy to deduct 10% from the grade each day a submission is late and a lowest possible grade. The New Gradebook has new posting policies – you can set the Gradebook to Manually post all activities by default and release graded activities one at a time or like the old Gradebook, manually post a single graded activity and release the grades later.
Many of you have wanted a way to override the final calculated grade in Canvas. There is now a Final Grade Override function that does just that. You will also notice that the New Gradebook offers a notes column. The notes column is not visible to students.
There are many new viewing options – Arrange by, filters (groups or sections), statuses, and making unpublished assignments visible to you. Grade status will tint a grade cell with different colors that indicate things such as late, missing, or excused. Columns can be dragged left or right and resized.
There are many more features and functional enhancements that will make grading more natural and intuitive. If you’d like to give it a try to go to the settings area of your course, click the Feature Options tab. The options page will allow you to toggle the New Gradebook on.
Below are some other helpful resources for the New Gradebook:
- Functionality Comparison: Current vs. New Canvas Gradebook
- New Gradebook: FAQ
- How do I use the New Gradebook?
- Canvas Instructor Guide – Gradebook
Feature Requests from the Canvas Community
In this section you can submit new ideas to improve Canvas.
Below there are some ideas open for voting:
Below there are some ideas still open for voting from last month:
- Submit an assignment on behalf of a student
- Have two due dates for peer review assignments
- More granular permissions for admins
- Anonymous Discussion Forums
- Printable / PDF-exportable quizzes
- Multiple Due Dates (checkpoints) for Discussions
- Ability to Save and Copy from Frequently Used Comments in Speedgrader/DocViewer
- Let us schedule a Publish Date / Time for Content Pages
- Attendance Overhaul
WalkMe Guides
WalkMe provides real-time guidance that is easy to follow by providing on-screen, step-by-step guidance that you can utilize to complete any task successfully. To access a WalkMe guide, simply click on the Canvas WalkThru menu and type in a question or task, then follow along as WalkMe shows you where to click, what settings to choose, and explains the options. If you ever experience an error in a WalkThru, please contact the helpdesk.