Canvas Release Notes (2019-07-13)

Upcoming Canvas ChangesCanvas Release Schedule Adjustments: July 15Starting July 15, the Canvas Release Schedule will be adjusted to support two-week deploys and monthly releases every third Saturday of the month. For more information, please see Upcoming Canvas Changes‌.

In this Canvas release (July 13), users with permission to generate pairing codes can export a CSV file with newly-generated pairing codes for all students in a course.

Admins can request Gradebook exports and the Grade Export report to include integration IDs. The sort arrow in the account-level People and Courses pages has been inverted to display the correct sorting for a specified column.

For all users, Finnish (Suomi) has been added as an available language in Canvas.

Feature Options

For institutions using the New Gradebook, the New Gradebook includes a grade posting policy, which sets how grades and comments are released to students.

External Tools (LTI)

For institutions using Commons, the Search page includes featured content to highlight or promotes specific resources. Additionally, the Imported page includes a search field for users to search for, sort, and filter previously imported resources.

Release notes also include API updates and fixed bugs.

Release notes describe upcoming Canvas functionality and are subject to change.

Follow the Canvas release notes space to be notified of updates
For all release changes, view the Release Notes Change Log
If you notice any contrary functionality compared to the outlined behavior in these notes, please file a Canvas support case according to your institution's support protocol
Other questions? View the Canvas Release Notes FAQ

Feature Options

The following feature options are addressed in this release:

Course: New Gradebook

Release Notes Change Log

New Features

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New Gradebook

Grade Post Policies

This feature is used in conjunction with an existing feature option in Canvas. Please view the content below for additional details. For more information about feature options, please see the Canvas Release Notes FAQ.

Release Advisory (2019-07-17)The Grade Posting Policy inadvertently affected the visibility of existing grades that were posted before the release. Some assignments may need to be manually posted for grades to display to students.  If a Gradebook previously included assignments that were previously muted and graded prior to the release, the grades will remain unposted until they are manually posted with the Post Grades button.For any assignments that have not yet been graded, they will be graded according to the course-level policy set in the New Gradebook Settings at the time of grading, unless the assignment is anonymous or moderated, which always have a manual post policy. Changing the policy for a course does not affect grade or comment visibility for existing assignments.

Feature Availability	15 July
Location to Enable Feature	New Gradebook
Configuration Details	New Gradebook Feature Option
Affected Canvas Areas	New Gradebook SpeedGrader
Affects User Interface	Yes
Affected User Roles	Instructors, Students
Feature Enhancement Ideas	Existing New Gradebook feature ideas
Specified Tag for Feature Ideas	gradebook_new

Summary

The New Gradebook includes a grade posting policy, which sets how grades and comments are released to students.

Change Benefit

This change redefines assignment-wide muting to an individual assignment level, making grades visible down to individual sections of a course, or hide previously posted grades if needed. For a summary of Post Policy changes, please see the Post Policies Overview and API Changes document.

This change only benefits the New Gradebook. Instructors using the Old Gradebook must continue to mute and unmute individual assignments and release grades to all students at the same time.

Affected User Roles & Behaviors

Instructorsc

Instructors are able to control when grades are released to all students. Assignment grades may be manually or automatically posted.

Automatically posted grades for an assignment are the equivalent of an unmuted assignment where grades and comments are immediately posted.

Manually posted grades allows an instructor to hide all grades and comments until the instructor chooses to post the grades.

The concept of muting grades has also been visually updated by replacing the previously known Mute icon with an Eye icon, which represents the assignment’s grade visibility. A transparent eye icon displays for assignments with a manually posted grading policy.

Course Grade Posting Policy

A posting policy for the entire course can be set in the settings, which will be set for all current and future assignments. By default, the policy is for grades to be posted automatically.

After a course policy has been applied, any additional changes must be made to individual assignments. Any assignment can be changed to support an individual policy that varies from the course policy. Policies can be updated in the assignment menu.

Manually Posted Grades

With manual posting, grades and comments are not revealed until the instructor chooses to post the assignment grades.

When an instructor enters a grade for a manually posted assignment, the icon changes to a solid state to show the assignment has been assigned grades that are not visible to a student.

When open, the Grade Detail Tray also displays a hidden label for each hidden submission.

Grade Detail Tray showing the Hidden label because the assignment is hidden to the student

Post Grades Process

At any time, an instructor can open the assignment menu in the Gradebook and choose to post grades to students. When the Post Grades option is selected, the Post Grades sidebar indicates the number of submissions that are hidden, including the number of submissions graded but not posted. Additionally, a dot also displays next to the individual submissions.

Grades can be posted to everyone, which means they are visible to all students, or they can be posted for only students with graded submissions. Additionally, both options support posting to one or multiple specific sections in the course. When posting by section, at least one section must be selected.

Hide Grades Process

Grades can also be hidden or re-hidden at any time, which may be needed to conceal or adjust previously posted grades. This behavior is the equivalent of muting and unmuting an assignment. The assignment menu Hide Grades option displays for any assignment where grades are visible to students, and instructors can choose to hide grades at any time.

When selected, the Hide Grades sidebar allows instructors to hide grades to all students by default, or instructors can select one or multiple specific sections where grades should be hidden. When hiding by section, at least one section must be selected.

When grades are hidden, the visibility icon changes to a solid state to indicate grades have been assigned that are not visible to students. Grades can be re-posted at any time using the assignment menu.

Student View

When assignment grades are manually posted and hidden to students, students see the Eye icon in the Grades page. When grades have been posted, the grade and any comments are visible in the Grades page.

SpeedGrader Functionality

Grades can also be hidden and posted in SpeedGrader.

Individual unposted hidden submissions are also indicated by the hidden label in the SpeedGrader sidebar. The hidden label displays once the submission receives a grade.

SpeedGrader shows the hidden label once a submission receives a grade

The visibility icon manages the grade policy the same way as the assignment menu does in the Gradebook.

The Post Grades option in SpeedGrader mirrors the functionality of the Gradebook

Anonymous Assignment Process

Anonymous assignments must always be manually posted regardless of the course-level grade policy. This behavior protects student anonymity. Anonymous assignments must be posted or hidden for all students in the assignment and cannot be managed by section.

Anonymous assignments that are hidden show a Hidden label in both the Grade Detail Tray and the SpeedGrader sidebar.

After grades are posted, SpeedGrader reloads to remove anonymity from all submissions, and grades are visible in the student Grades page.

Posting grades in SpeedGrader with an anonymous assignment includes information about removing anonymity

Moderated Assignment Process

To be included in the Gradebook, moderated assignments must follow the regular moderation workflow. After the moderator has selected grades for all students and posted grades, the grades display in the New Gradebook. If the moderator wants to keep grades hidden, the Display to Students option should not be selected, and grades can be posted to students in the Gradebook at a later date. However, if grades are displayed to students and an instructor wants to keep them hidden, grades can be re-hidden in the Gradebook using the Hide Grades option.

Updated Features

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Commons

These features are used in conjunction with an external tool (LTI) in Canvas. Please view the content below for additional details. For more information about LTI tools, please see the Canvas Release Notes FAQ.

Location to Enable Feature	Commons LTI
Configuration Details	Commons LTI
Affected Canvas Areas	Commons LTI
Beta/Test Environment Support	Functionality affects content in the beta environment only; New/updated features not available until production deploy
Permissions	Course Content - add / edit / delete Discussions - view Assignments and Quizzes - add / edit / delete
Affects User Interface	Yes
Affected User Roles	Instructors
Feature Enhancement Ideas	Existing Commons feature ideas
Specified Tag for Feature Ideas	Commons

Featured Content

Summary

Commons includes featured content at the top of the Search page that highlights or promotes specific resources.

Change Benefit

This change allows instructors to easily identify high quality instructional content in Commons. Featured content is currently curated by the Commons team and highlighted to benefit all Commons users.

Affected User Roles & Behaviors

Instructors

Instructors can view and import featured content from the Commons Search page. Content can be viewed by clicking the content, the same as accessing any other resource item.

Featured content is viewable to all Commons users and cannot be minimized in the page.

Imported Tab Search Field

Summary

The Imported page includes a search field for users to search for, sort, and filter previously imported resources.

Change Benefit

This feature allows users to find specific resources on the Imported page.

Affected User Roles & Behaviors

Instructors

Instructors can open the Imported page and view the search field. The search field functions the same way as the search field available throughout Commons.

People

Pairing Codes CSV Export

Location to Enable Feature	People - Options Menu
Configuration Details	Self-Registration must be enabled for the account
Affected Canvas Areas	People
Beta/Test Environment Support	Yes
Permissions	Users - generate observer pairing codes for students
Affects User Interface	Yes
Affected User Roles	Instructors
Feature Enhancement Ideas	View existing people feature ideas
Specified Tag for Feature Ideas	People

Summary

Users with permission to generate pairing codes can export a CSV file with newly-generated pairing codes for all students in a course.

Change Benefit

This change allows instructors to generate pairing codes for all course students in a single CSV file. Previously, pairing codes could only be generated individually.

Affected User Roles & Behaviors

Instructors

Instructors with permission to generate pairing codes can export codes for all students. Located in the Options icon, the Export Pairing Codes option downloads codes as a CSV file. This option only displays in accounts with self-registration enabled.

The CSV file includes the students’ names, pairing codes, and the date and time that each code will expire. These pairing codes can then be used to link observers to the students’ Canvas accounts.

examples of pairing codes in a CSV file

Reports

Integration ID

Location to Enable Feature

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Comments

millerjm

The admin sorting arrows will finally be fixed! Thank you!

mvandevelde

No, it’s not just you, we’re not seeing several changes in the beta environments right now.

New Gradebook, Speed Grader … and possibly others.

Waiting on Canvas to identify the issue (documentation or deployment).

cwhermsen

About the "featured content" change in Commons: who decides what content is featured, and will this be divided between education levels (primary, secondary school, higher education)?

audra_agnelly

When an assignment is hidden, will a student see the missing or late label on their grade page, or will those statuses be hidden until the grade is posted? I tried to test in Beta, but I don't see the new feature in that environment yet.

ctitmus

Hello mvandevelde,

When the beta environment refresh occurred, the post policy feature was unexpectedly removed from the environment. Our engineering team was made aware of this and have re-added the feature to the Canvas beta environment. You should see it in your beta instance today.

Cody

ctitmus

Hi @audra_agnelly !

It appears that Late and Missing labels will still display while grades are hidden. You should also be able to test this feature in beta today. When the beta environment refresh occurred, the post policy feature was unexpectedly removed from the environment. Our engineering team was made aware of this and have re-added the feature to the Canvas beta environment.

Cody

Chris_Hofer

@cwhermsen ...

Per the above information:

Change Benefit
This change allows instructors to easily identify high quality instructional content in Commons. Featured content is currently curated by the Commons team and highlighted to benefit all Commons users.

kmatson

Why did you make muting grades so complicated? It was simple they are on or off now we have so many layers we can't figure it out. Please remove this feature.

Thank you,

Karen Matson

kmatson

I don't have the new feature on and I have the eyeball for some assignments and not others and I can't get rid of it. Why? Canvas new mute eyeball

Thank you,

Karen Matson

kmatson

Well I turned the feature on and then turned it off to clear out the eyeballs. So for those of you frustrated by the eyeballs you can turn on the feature and then turn it off to clear your screen.

Karen Matson

kmatson

I read through the Admin notes and I don't see the ability to NOT turn on the Grade Posting Policy am I missing that? Do we have the option of not turning this on? We didn't turn on the Advanced >> Allow final grade override and I want to know if we have the option of NOT turning on Grade Posting Policy in the same manner.

Thank you,

Karen Matson

Chris_Hofer

@kmatson ...

Part of your question on "Why?" might be answered here:

The concept of muting grades has also been visually updated by replacing the previously known Mute icon with an Eye icon, which represents the assignment’s grade visibility. A transparent eye icon displays for assignments with a manually posted grading policy.

audra_agnelly

@kmatson ‌ I'm not seeing those eyeballs in my test courses unless I make changes to the posting policy. I wonder if they're showing up on assignments that previously had the mute function applied?

audra_agnelly

Now that it's showing up in Beta, I was able to do some testing. I really like the fact that there's an overarching policy. We're K12 and get feedback about the constant notifications, and this will give teachers more streamlined ability to hold notifications by default, so they can grade at night without the system firing off notifications. In testing, I had some issues with the workflow and use of indicators in the gradebook:

Previously, to mute an assignment from the gradebook, you clicked Mute from the assignment menu and then clicked the confirmation. Now you select "grade posting policy" from the menu which opens a panel. You have to then select "manual post" and confirm. It's just one extra click, but feels like a step back when the flow was simpler before.
I'm concerned about the clarity of releasing grades to specific sections. When you select "post grades" from the assignment menu, a panel opens and orange dot indicators appear in the cells where the grade has been unreleased. After I choose my post options and click Post those orange dots go away. So, if I've only posted a grade to one of my sections, there's no indicator to highlight those other sections/grades to remind me that I haven't posted that section yet. I can see that in Speedgrader or in the grade detail tray but not when I scan my gradebook. I can see teachers very easily forgetting that they hadn't released grades for a particular section. I'd like to see those orange dots on all the time as a reminder that a grade hasn't been released yet.
I find the eye icons confusing. Maybe it's something people will need to adapt to, but I don't find them intuitive and kept having to go back to the release notes to understand what they were indicating. What bothered me the most was that after I had entered scores for all students and released the grade the transparent icon remained at the top of my gradebook. It makes it feel like something is wrong or incomplete about the column. If there are eyes at the top of every column, I'm less apt to pay attention to them and address an issue. If the grades are released and all grades are posted, that icon should go away. It seems like you'd be able to use the same logic that enables/disables the "All grades posted" option in the assignment menu could be used to hide/display the eye.

kmatson

Chris thank you for that insight. I do think that faculty will be confused by the constant eyeball icon and determining what it means and trying to figure out if students are seeing their grades and their feedback.

The only advantage I can see to this is I can check the box to Manually Post Grades and all of my assignments will be muted automatically. I love the irony.

So who controls this Grade Posting Policy when there are multiple faculty, TAs, and graders?

Thank you,

Karen

kmatson

Yes the student still sees the Missing and now a score so that is confusing for them.

Karen

kblack

Interesting points, @audra_agnelly . Let's hope the Instructure engineers are still working on these things. Somewhat similar to @kmatson 's experience--but in a different place---I found that in a brand newly-created class where no policy was created at all, I had the crossed-out eye icon appearing for me in the Total column on the gradebook but not on the assignment itself (as Karen did):

316518_total column.jpg

Also, in the same class (again...NO policy ever created; it's just at the default of "automatic") when I post a grade for a student in SpeedGrader, the icon in SpeedGrader has the crossed-out eye icon, as well. Note that the student score does NOT show "Hidden" next to it:

316519_sample posted grade.jpg

I might also point out there is currently no screentip appearing when mousing over the eye icon in SpeedGrader, though again I realize--this being Beta--it may still be a work in progress.

Overall, however, I believe this is an awesome, awesome feature and much-needed....and requested through the years. It just needs a bit of fine-tuning still on the part of the engineers. I personally am not bothered by the eye icon, either. I think the crossed-out eye icon is much, much better than the dorky bell icon we had before. Everything just needs a bit more fine-tuning. Hopefully that will happen before it reaches production.

audra_agnelly

The eye icon in the total column has some really odd and inconsistent behavior. I hadn't even looked at it when I was reviewing the update earlier:

When I mouse over the icon in that cell, the tooltip displays that warning about scores being hidden, even though there were test students whose grades had all been unhidden. When I dragged the Total column elsewhere in my gradebook the eye icons disappeared. In a different test course, there was no eye icon until I chose to hide grades for an assignment, but when the icon appeared in the total column, I couldn't get that tooltip to appear.

mvandevelde

Thanks @ctitmus and Canvas for the fast response on this.

All working now as expected. Smiley Wink

kmatson

Audra,

We are getting the same error here with the total column. Everything is graded yet Canvas tells me there are ungraded items. Where are they?

Karen Matson

kmatson

Yes Ken they have to get this right. I think it is too many layers.

Kraen

kmatson

Chris,

I don't have a Manually Post Grades checked and I still have eye balls.

audra_agnelly

Can anyone shed light on the Deployment ID? We had some discussion in the Beta Chat, but weren't sure of it's implications. Will clicking that link display the deployment ID or will it bring up editable fields? Is the ID assigned automatically when adding a tool that uses LTI 1.3/LTI Advantage? As an Admin, what's a situation where I would need to do something with this?

Becky_Patt

@kblack ‌ and @audra_agnelly ‌:
After the release notes chat today I hopped back into Beta, in a course with the classic/old gradebook and turned on new gradebook. I did not see the Eye icon, anywhere, until I changed the posting policy from automatic to manual. This behavior is consistent with my testing from Monday. When toying with posting hidden grades from SpeedGrader, I note the slash through the Eye icon disappears when grades post. It would make sense, to me, for the icon's coloring in SpeedGrader to align with its behavior in Gradebook not only for consistency but also to highlight the ability of an instructor to post hidden grades from within SpeedGrader.

Chris_Hofer

@kmatson ...

The screen you are showing appears to be for the overall "Grade Posting Policy" which would be for the entire course (accessed through the gear icon shown in the upper right corner of my attached image)...not for just one assignment. My setting here is currently "Automatically Post Grades". For a given assignment, you should have a three-dot "kebab" icon (which only shows up when you hover over that area, by the way) like the one shown in my image next to my "Mobile Assignment" column. If you click that icon, you should have an option at the bottom for "Grade Posting Policy". Here is where you change it from "Manually" (eye icon) to "Automatically", and I think it *should* remove the eye icon. Does this help?

Grade Posting Policy

kmatson

Canvas I am concerned you have a problem with this new policy. I deleted all assignments imported three new ones and I have the eye icon telling me there is a difference and I have a problem. I haven't entered anything. This doesn't go away when all scores are entered and is there when no scores are entered. Is that a permanent feature we ignore because it is meaningless or how do I get this to not show?

316666_EyeBall in total.jpg

Thank you,

Karen Matson

bkompe

I'm a bit confused about when you choose to Post Grades. There are two options: Everyone (Grades will be made visible to all students) and Graded (Grades will be made visible to students with graded submissions). Surely, the only student who will benefit from viewing their posted grade would be one who had been graded? (I presume that if the student hasn't been graded yet then they would not see any alteration to their submission so they don't gain anything by viewing it). Maybe the first option refers to submissions which have comments but no grade yet?

I know that this change to muting grades is still evolving but, when the sidebar opens, can you please add some information about what each of these options mean? (It is easy for staff to choose an incorrect option when it is unclear about what each option involves).

Thanks.

cwhermsen

I read that, but that doesn't answer my question: will this be divided between education levels (primary, secondary school, higher education)? Why does the Commons team decide what kind of content our teachers get to see, and what criteria is this based on? Do these criteria take into account matters like location, culture, style of education (and level, as mentioned)?

cwhermsen

Being able to set a policy for posting grades in a course is a very welcome addition. I do have a question though: I find the phrase "Any grades that have already [been] posted will remain visible." for the Manually Post Grades option somewhat unclear as it currently seems to do the opposite (and I assume the word "been" will be added later). I turned it on in a test course with unmuted grade columns which were "muted" for the teacher and made invisible to the students. What does "visible" mean in this context, visible to teachers or students?

Edit: removed other comment that no longer applies.

james_trueman

Posted this elsewhere and a colleague has asked me to drop something in here too. Apologies if you've already seen this.

Reading the release notes I'm extremely saddened and frustrated to read that 'Anonymous assignments must be posted or hidden for all students in the assignment and cannot be managed by section.' i.e. this won't work for anonymous assignments - and will detrimentally affect large swathes of Canvas customers.

It's really hard to contain how exasperated we feel with this development decision. The release doesn't reflect the extensive conversations that we had with Product Management or the agreements that we thought stood. We made strategic plans, and promises to faculty on the back of that, and are now in a really challenging position because of this.

Unmuting the grades for students in Section A (which has been assigned one Due Date) at a different time to unmuting the grades in Section B (which has a different Due Date) is not connected to, and should not be prevented by, the anonymity status of those Sections. It is however, because of the way that Instructure has implemented anonymity. So anyone who lobbied for selective unmute (by section), who also uses anonymity, isn't in luck.

This goes back to the discussions the UK HE User Group has had with Instructure about working with them on the User Stories they are using to develop from. That development still seems to be happening behind closed doors, and it seems arbitrary decisions are being made that do not actually align with the business users' needs?

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