Grading is done and it’s time to enjoy the holiday break. Before you go, a few Canvas Notes….
- Remember you NO LONGER need to “end your course”, that’s why the button is gone. Courses are closed automatically five days after the end of the grading period for students and moved to their Past Enrollments. Students can still access your content as read-only though, so be sure you have locked any files you don’t want them to have future access to and check quizzes too to be sure they have defined end dates so students will not be able to open them. As an instructor you can still access your courses anytime. To remove them from your Course List menu, just click the “customize”link in the top corner of the drop-down menu and uncheck any courses you no longer want showing.
- Planning ahead? If you’re teaching multiple sections of a course and would like them cross-linked so you only have to put content in one, send me an e-mail ASAP so it will be ready when you return from break.
- Don’t forget to PUBLISH your course when you are ready so spring semester students will have access.
Over break there will be a Canvas update which will improve the look of your dashboard by condensing your Recent Activity into categories. That way you can choose what to expand. What’s great about that? It will no longer display private messages so it alleviates the FERPA concern many of you expressed.
Also, you’ll see some tweaking to the icons to give Canvas a more coherent look.
Two Feature Updates you’ll like…QUIZZES…will soon allow for showing “one-question-at-a-time” and “lock questions after answering”. This will help for efficiency and make it harder for those trying to cheat. Not that we expect that, of course. 
Secondly….ANALYTICS…if you haven’t taken a look, you’ll want to. Now you’ll be able to sort for the info you need by student name much faster as the course analytics table will be paginated.
Look for these changes after this weekend and read more here…..
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