Author Archives: Shane Degen

[RESOLVED] Canvas Unplanned Outage (03/25/2021)

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RESOLVED: Between 7:40 AM and 9:12 AM on Thursday, March 25th users may have had issues accessing Canvas. For additional details see: Canvas Unplanned Outage. The issue has been resolved. Please reach out to Canvas 24/7 support for any additional issues.

Beginning at roughly 7:40AM on Thursday, March 25th users may have started receiving timeout and gateway errors when accessing Canvas. The vendor is aware of the issue and currently investigating.

We will update this post as more information is available.

Resolved: 9:12AM the issue has been resolved.

Update 8:07AM: The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.

Canvas Update (03/20/2021)

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On Saturday, March 20, Instructure will deploy the latest release to the Canvas environment.  The highlights of this release are listed below.  The full release notes are also available.

  • Assignments – Webcam Submissions: File upload assignments that allow for the upload of a .png file will allow students to use their webcam to take a photo.
  • Course Settings – Course Availability Date Enhancements: When an instructor views the Participation section in the Course Settings page, the Participation section displays a menu that defaults to Term dates for new courses. This option sets student course participation to the start and end dates defined for the term.
  • Modules – New Quiz Support: When an instructor adds an item to a module and selects a quiz, the Create Quiz option displays both the New Quizzes and Classic Quizzes quiz engines. New Quizzes is the default, but instructors can switch to Classic Quizzes and create a name for the quiz.
  • Outcomes – Learning Mastery Gradebook Student Filters: The Learning Mastery Gradebook includes filters for inactive and concluded enrollments. This change allows instructors to view outcomes data in the Learning Mastery Gradebook for students who no longer have an active enrollment in their course.
  • Rich Content Editor – File Preview Enhancements: Files linked in the Rich Content Editor can be previewed in an overlay or inline. This change allows users to control the display of the file preview. Previously all file previews opened in a new browser tab.
  • SpeedGrader – Submission Reassignments: In SpeedGrader, instructors can reassign an assignment to an individual student and ask them to redo their submission, as long as the student has submissions remaining on the assignment.

UW-Whitewater Updates

  • Resolved Issue – Webex Meeting Password required: Students joining a Webex Meeting from Canvas using the web browser were being prompted for a meeting password. This issue has been resolved. For additional details, please see our post.
  • Additional Canvas Personal Pronoun Options – March 23rd. UW-System will be enabling additional personal pronouns inside of Canvas on Tuesday March 23rd. For additional details and the full list of pronouns, please see this announcement.

If you have any questions or concerns about the service pack updates, please contact UW-W Canvas Support.

Canvas Update (02/20/2021)

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On Saturday, February 20, Instructure will deploy the latest release to the Canvas environment.  The highlights of this release are listed below.  The full release notes are also available.

  • Courses – MathJax Equation Enhancements & Text Field LaTeX Characters: LaTeX equations can be entered in any Canvas text field, and MathJax is loaded if Canvas detects an equation image added by delimited LaTeX characters. 
  • Rich Content Editor – Pretty HTML Editor: The Rich Content Editor includes a pretty HTML editor in addition to the raw HTML editor.

If you have any questions or concerns about the service pack updates, please contact UW-W Canvas Support.

Spring 2021 LTC Training and Workshops

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The LTC is offering a full roster of learning opportunities ranging from training on Webex and Canvas to rethinking the possibilities of learning, teaching, and working with technology. Please visit the LTC’s calendar to see all sessions, descriptions, and dates.

Can’t join at scheduled times? No problem, email ltc@uww.edu to request a personal or department session. Links to previously recorded sessions are also often available.  

Don’t see a session on something you’d like to learn? Let us know! We look forward to meeting your needs as best we can — email ltc@uww.edu with your request. And, don’t forget, LinkedIn Learning offers on-demand classes on many topics!

Instructional Workshops:

Webex:

Canvas:

General Campus Technology:

If you have any questions, please reach out to the UW-W Learning Technology Center.

Canvas Update (01/16/2021)

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On Saturday, January 16, Instructure will deploy the latest release to the Canvas environment.  The highlights of this release are listed below.  The full release notes are also available.

  • Notifications – Push Notification Types end of Life: When users open their Notification Preferences page or notifications in a Canvas app, Push notifications are only supported for specific notification categories. Users can adjust their notification preferences by setting up additional supported communication channels.
  • Settings – Feature Option Management: The buttons to manage feature flags at the account, course, and user levels have been updated in design and functionality. This change aligns design consistency with other areas of Canvas (specifically the Permissions page) and allows admins to better manage subaccount- and course-level feature defaults.

UW-Whitewater Updates

  • New Rich Content Editor: The New Rich Content Editor is an update to the previous Canvas Rich Content Editor. It provides a condensed, more intuitive toolbar that is grouped by common icons and interactions. We will be enabling the New Rich Content Editor on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2020. For additional details or training schedule, please see our post.
  • Flash – End of Life: Beginning in January of 2021, the Adobe Flash Player has been uninstalled from campus devices. Previously, in July of 2017, Adobe announced that the Flash Player will no longer be distributed or updated after December 31, 2020. Additional information can be found on the Adobe Flash Player EOL General Information Page. We have details available to help you identify if this will impact you.
  • Respondus LockDown Browser – Chromebook compatibility: Chromebooks will soon be able to launch Respondus LockDown Browser, enabling their use for monitored quizzing across campus. More information to come soon!

If you have any questions or concerns about the service pack updates, please contact UW-W Canvas Support.

What Students Want in Canvas

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There are many good ways to set up a Canvas course, but how can you know which things students want in every one of their courses? Well, to help you the LTC asked them! Based on multiple student panels, here are the most common requests for your Canvas course:

  1. Match your Assignments and Grades area to your course syllabus.
  2. Reorganize Modules to a chronological layout.
  3. Populate assignments and tasks to student calendars.
  4. Utilize the description area of Quizzes and Assignments.
  5. When deciding between timely feedback and deep feedback, choose timely.
  6. Keep grades up to date, including entering 0s.

While each of these require additional work, none of them are outside of your reach. The recording below will walk you through making adjustments in Canvas to address the first four points.

Students understand their instructors can feel crunched for time, just like they do. When this occurs they’ve found that timely feedback best helps their progress through the course. They asked that if you are put into a position where you need to choose between providing timely feedback versus deep feedback, that you choose timely. Too often, by the time they received feedback on an assessment they had already moved on to the next lessons, building on a foundation they later found out isn’t as solid as they thought.

Keeping grades up to date ties in with providing timely feedback. Students want to know how they are doing, and when each instructor handles their grades differently, it means the only system that is going to feel intuitive to your students is an up-to-date grades area. This includes entering 0’s for any assignment that counts against their final grade. As a benefit, entering 0’s by setting a default grade at the time the assignment is being graded means less work for you.

If you have any questions or concerns about this update, please contact the UW-W Learning Technology Center.

Canvas Update (12/19/2020)

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On Saturday, December 19, Instructure deployed the latest release to the Canvas environment.  The highlights of this release are listed below.  The full release notes are also available.

  • Student View Changes: The “Student View” button has been removed from the homepage and has been re-added as an Icon to the top right bar of most Canvas screens inside of the course.This change allows instructors to access Student View quicker.
  • New Rich Content Editor – Upload Media File Placement: Newly recorded media and upload media is stored in the Course or User Files folder, according to user role, to ensure that users can reuse media. Previously, newly recorded and uploaded media could not be repurposed without being exported as part of course content.
  • People – Group Import CSV File: The Groups area within “People” will allow for CSV imports to create and assign currently enrolled users to Groups. This will be especially useful for instructors that have created groups in external tools and want to reproduce them in a course.

UW-Whitewater Updates

  • New Rich Content Editor: The New Rich Content Editor is an update to the previous Canvas Rich Content Editor. It provides a condensed, more intuitive toolbar that is grouped by common icons and interactions. We will be enabling the New Rich Content Editor on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2020. For additional details or training schedule, please see our post.
  • Flash – End of Life: Beginning in January of 2021, the Adobe Flash Player will be uninstalled from campus devices. Previously, in July of 2017, Adobe announced that the Flash Player will no longer be distributed or updated after December 31, 2020. Additional information can be found on the Adobe Flash Player EOL General Information Page. We have details available to help you identify if this will impact you.

If you have any questions or concerns about the service pack updates, please contact UW-W Canvas Support.

Canvas to WINS Final Grade Submission

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Each semester, grades need to be entered into WINS. While many instructors do this manually, Canvas can help automate some of the steps for you. The Learning Technology Center is providing training on the three steps needed to push grades from Canvas so they can be accepted in WINS.

  1. Finish grading (including entering 0s) and setting the Grade Scheme
  2. Export from Canvas
  3. Verify and accept grades in WINS

The Fall 2020 WINS Grades Roster will be open on December 14 and close at noon on December 22. We have scheduled 60 minute hands on training sessions if you are interested in receiving live support.

Date/TimeLocationRegister
Monday, December 14th
1:00pm – 2:00pm		WebexRegistration
Tuesday, December 15th
2:00am – 3:00pm		WebexRegistration
Thursday, December 17th
1:00pm – 2:00pm		WebexRegistration
Friday, December 18th
2:00pm – 3:00pm		WebexRegistration
Monday, December 21st
10:00am – 11:00am		WebexRegistration
Monday, December 21st
2:00pm – 3:00pm		WebexRegistration

If you have any questions or concerns about this update, please contact the UW-W Learning Technology Center.

Canvas Training: Better Courses Through Better Pages

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pages
use pages to build better canvas sites

Have you moved past the basics of how to get content into Canvas, and looking for a simple way to improve the learning experience for your students? The LTC will be offering synchronous trainings to go with our new asynchronous, self-paced resource designed to help instructors take lengthy modules, and turn them into sleek pages.

Not only is the content of the course about how to create more engaging pages, it also demonstrates simple steps you can take to do this with your own courses, by showing the transition from a typical course design to one based on a more dynamic page.

We have scheduled 60 minute training sessions if you are interested in receiving a live version of the materials offered above.

Date/TimeLocationRegister
Wednesday, January 6th
3:00pm – 4:00pm		WebexRegistration
Monday, January 11th
2:00pm – 3:00pm		WebexRegistration
Wednesday, January 13th
3:00pm – 4:00pm		WebexRegistration

If you have any questions or concerns about this update, please contact the UW-W Learning Technology Center.

Canvas Update (10/17/2020)

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On Saturday, October 17, Instructure will deploy the latest release to the Canvas environment.  The highlights of this release are listed below.  The full release notes are also available.

  • Global Navigation – Recent History: The Global Navigation Menu includes a Recent History link, which displays recently visited pages in Canvas. This change helps users remember what page they last viewed in one or multiple courses.
  • Notifications – Notification Preferences Interface: The user-level Notifications page has been updated to match the design of the course-level Notifications page. Additional enhancements have been added to clarify notifications between each level..
  • MathJax Equation Improvements: The MathJax JS library has been improved to render equations in a more accessible format and promote ease of use. Math equations created anywhere in Canvas will be rendered as MathML. This change improves accessibility for equations throughout Canvas. Previously, equations were treated as an image and included title attributes and alternative text and were not available to keyboard users. Additionally, image views varied by browser and screen readers, equations could not be copied, and alternative text could be inadvertently changed or removed.

UW-Whitewater Updates

UDOIT Course Accessibility Checker is now available. The tool is designed to identify accessibility concerns and provide suggestions for improving course accessibility. There is an introduction and instructions for use available through the UW-System KB, and UWW trainings are available.

If you have any questions or concerns about the service pack updates, please contact UW-W Canvas Support.