Reading Time: 2 minutes Canvas is updating how content is published in modules – and simplifying the process for publishing/unpublishing multiple items in their June 17 release. Previously, instructors would need to set the published/unpublished status on each module and each item within a module. So, if they wanted to unpublish an entire module to work on it, they would need to unpublish each item individually, then republish each item when they finished. Now with this update, the status of an entire module and its items can be changed at once! To use this new feature, click the drop-down publish/unpublish button for a module. You’ll see three items in…
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Canvas Updates: Accessing SpeedGrader for New Quizzes
Reading Time: 2 minutes In its May 20 update, Canvas has made it easy to access SpeedGrader for a New Quiz. Previously, you’d have to find the New Quiz in the gradebook or in your “to-grade” list to get to SpeedGrader. Now, you can access it through just about anywhere you can access a New Quiz in Canvas – including inside the build pages for the New Quiz itself! From Canvas modules or the Quizzes/Assignments pages, click the three dots for the quiz and select “SpeedGrader” from the drop-down. From both the New Quiz overall settings page and the “Build” page where you can edit the quiz questions,…
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Canvas Update: Grade by Question in SpeedGrader
Reading Time: 2 minutes With the update releasing April 15, Canvas is adjusting how instructors can review and grade New Quiz questions in SpeedGrader. Previously when scoring questions that needed manual grading, instructors could only view results organized by student. Now, Canvas will allow instructors to flip between students to grade by question. This is controlled by a setting in the “options” menu when you’re in SpeedGrader for a New Quiz. Turning on grade by question When in SpeedGrader for a New Quiz, click the settings gear at the top left, then click “options” in the menu. In the window that pops up, check the box for “grade by question,”…
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Canvas Update: Instructors Can Upload Files to Assignments for Students
Reading Time: 2 minutes Canvas has recently added a feature to allow instructors to upload files to assignments for students. To use this feature, you need to start in the gradebook. Click on the student’s cell for the assignment you want to upload, then click the arrow. Canvas will slide out a panel from the right side of your screen. Click the “Submit for Student” link. Drag and drop or use the file picker to add the assignment file(s), then click “submit.” If you upload multiple files, they will be added as one submission. The file is now available to be graded in SpeedGrader! Any files uploaded using this method…
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Canvas Update: New Quiz Fill in the Blank Question Type Modification
Reading Time: < 1 minutes Canvas has updated one of the New Quiz question types. With this change, it’s easier to create fill-in-the blank questions. Previously, you had to type all your text then highlight specific words or phrases and hit “enter” to create blanks. With this update, you can easily mark the blanks as you go. Each fill-in-the-blank answer needs to be surrounded by backticks (just above “tab” on your keyboard. It took me way too long to find it since I don’t use that key frequently). Once you have your blanks marked, you can choose the answer type (open entry, dropdown, or word bank) for each blank. These…
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How Can I Quickly Adjust Multiple Canvas Assignment Due Dates and Times?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Previously, Canvas has made it easy to adjust due dates for all assignments in a course. You’d go to the assignments page, click that little “three dots” icon in the top right to expand a menu, and select “Edit Assignment Dates.” Canvas would display all assignments from the course and any dates associated with them currently. From there, you could either manually change dates or use the checkboxes and “Batch Edit” button to update multiple dates at once. But with these, you were stuck with whatever times were associated with an assignment. And if there wasn’t a time associated with an assignment, Canvas would default…
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Canvas Update: Printing New Quizzes
Reading Time: < 1 minutes Canvas has continued expanding the available features for New Quizzes. With their latest update, you can now print off a quiz, either with or without the answers marked. Before we jump into the “how,” we’re going to spend a few moments talking about some essential details. This is only available for quizzes built with the New Quiz engine inside Canvas (quizzes indicated with the solid rocket icon). If you have your quiz set up to randomly pull questions from an item bank, you will get a random assortment of questions in your printed quiz. You would only get all questions if you set your quiz to take all questions from the item bank. The…
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Canvas Update: Item Banks in Course Navigation and Item Bank Sharing Tweaks
Reading Time: 2 minutes With the latest update, Canvas has simplified how some aspects of New Quizzes work. They’ve added Item Banks to your course navigation, and they’ve also adjusted some of the sharing settings. Item Banks in Course Navigation We’ll look at the first item well…first. We’ve talked before about the hoops to jump through to add or edit questions in New Quiz Item Banks. That method is still valid, but Canvas has added a new way to jump to Item Banks quickly – a link directly in your course navigation (if you can’t see it there, check the Navigation tab of your course settings to make sure Item Banks is…
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Canvas Update: SpeedGrader Comment Library
Reading Time: 3 minutes Canvas is adding a new feature on June 19, 2021, to help make SpeedGrader even speedier – a library where you can save and quickly access feedback comments. Before we dive into the specifics of this new feature, we do need to define a couple of things first. What you typically think of as “SpeedGrader” is in fact two separate things that work together – DocViewer (the left side of the screen where you can see the document and annotate it) and SpeedGrader (the right panel where you enter grades and add overall feedback comments). This distinction is very important with this new feature – this is a SpeedGrader comment library. Now that we’ve made…
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Canvas Update: Release Notes Available in the Canvas Help Menu
Reading Time: < 1 minutes We’re going to spend the next couple weeks looking at the new Canvas features being released in June. The first feature we’re focusing on is the release notes themselves. Release notes are currently available through the Canvas community website. You can go there each month to check out the planned changes or updates for Canvas. But Canvas is making it even easier to view each new installment of the release notes. Once this new update goes live on June 19, you’ll be able to access the release notes from the Canvas help menu. In that menu, you’ll see the release notes for whatever role(s) you have…