What's New in Canvas

Discussions have a new look! 

Fall 2024

This is an opt-in feature that is only visible to Instructors and TAs and must first be enabled in your Course Settings under the 'Feature Options' tab.

By enabling this option, Discussion threads have a “Summarize” button that will use generative AI to generate a summary of key points and questions in the thread.

Once generated, summaries may be refined by passing a description of desired outputs (e.g. “concerns about grading policy”), or be regenerated. 

See the Help Guide Links to an external site.

Learn more about what's behind the scenes of this tool:

Peerceptiv replaces the Kritik peer review tool previously piloted at SPH.  It is a robust peer review platform that supports individual and group assignments as well as live-presentation peer feedback.  Peerceptiv is full of customizable features to suit your needs.

Learn more and view a recorded training session.

Fall 2024

The Canvas rich text editor now has a Find and Replace tool to assist with updates:

Fall 2024

With Canvas' updated 'Assign to' options, you can now create materials that are displayed to some users and not others:

This can be helpful for merged section courses that have minor differences, or for co-curricular sites to manage content visibility.

More information:

• Assign a Module to individual students or sections Links to an external site.

An analysis by University of Michigan researchers of more than 30 million grading records from U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades. 

Read the full article in the University Record Links to an external site.

Break the mold by reviewing Speedgrader submissions in random order.  Once in Speedgrader:

1. Click the 'Settings' represented by a gear icon and choose 'Options'
2. Expand the drop-down menu of options to select 'randomize students'
3. Click 'Save Settings'

Fall 2024

Change the order of your scoring rubric on graded items using this new feature!

1. To modify an existing rubric, navigate to the assignment and click the pencil icon on the rubric.
2. Select the 'Make Rubric Sortable'
3. You should now see up and down arrows along the left-hand side of each rubric criterion. Click to move that item up or down in the rubric order.
4. When finished, save your changes by clicking 'Update Rubric'

Learn more about designing effective Rubrics.

Winter 2024