Canvas Corner: New Changes in the Canvas LMS

Recently, Canvas introduced a Discussions redesign with a new user interface (UI) and new features. The redesign has been available at NSU as a feature option that you may have already turned on in your course settings to preview the changes. Moving forward, the new discussion redesign will now be a part of every NSU Canvas course.  The good news is that the change will happen automatically. Nothing has to be done and nothing will be lost from previous discussions. You will also see a new look in the Announcements tool, although no functionality has changed when it comes to Announcements.

The new Discussion feature offers new viewing options for both instructors and students. These include a choice between a split-screen view (where you can view threaded responses on one side of the screen) or the classic inline view. There are also new sort and filter options and an enhanced search function to make finding specific discussion posts easier. The new Discussion feature is also fully responsive, making it mobile-friendly so both you and students can easily engage across devices. 

Students and instructors can respond in threads to each other’s messages, and they can quote posts or use the “@” symbol to directly mention classmates and faculty in a discussion, making conversations more dynamic and interactive.

An image of the new Canvas discussions layout, with split-view and the discussion thread on the right side. An arrow points to new options for sorting and filtering at the top. An arrow highlights the split-view. Another arrow highlights 'at' tagging of users in discussions.

Instructors can now also set up ungraded anonymous discussion posts, with two levels of anonymity. One is partial anonymity where students can choose whether to reveal their name and profile picture, or full anonymity where all names and profile pictures will be hidden to everyone including the instructor. This may be a desired option to allow more candid and open responses.  

The discussion feature update also includes the ability to report a post to the instructor if a student feels it was inappropriate. This reporting feature is available for all posts, whether anonymous or not. Instructors will see a notification in the discussion itself and get an email notification showing them the post has been reported. Reported posts will not be hidden from any users, however, and once a post has been reported, it will always be displayed as reported – although the instructor can choose to edit or delete the post. 

The image shows the new Edit History feature, listing multiple versions of a post, date and time-stamped. A 'Collapse all' button is highlighted at the top right of the history.Another exciting feature is the ability to see the editing history of posts. This is available to both instructors and students. When a post is edited, previous versions of the post are still available for instructors to see. This could be helpful to track the history of posts, which can be useful for various reasons.  Instructors are able to monitor inappropriate posts that a student may have deleted or edited after posting. If a requirement to post before seeing replies is enabled, an edit history will be available for faculty to see students who may have posted with a blank response before editing. Further, if a student claims the post was edited by the instructor, a history of edits will be available for the record.

The image shows an arrow pointing to the View History link, listed below the Student name and edited date and time-stamp.

Coming Soon to Canvas 

There will soon be a new “find and replace” option available in the Rich Content Editor which will make it easier to search through and change content on a page. This will be found under the “tools” option in the editor. It will work like the find-and-replace feature available in other software tools such as Microsoft Word. 

There are also some other exciting features coming to the Discussion tool that you will be seeing in the future. One of these is an improved experience in the Speedgrader, which will have new options for how to view the discussion in the Speedgrader. Another new feature will be the option to set two due dates for a discussion, called “checkpoints” so that one date can be set for the original post, for example, and one for replies. We look forward to these changes and will keep you updated as they take effect.  

For more information on the Discussion redesign, please visit: Discussion Redesign Update – Instructure Community – 588747 (canvaslms.com) 

For more information on how to use the new features as an instructor, please visit: How do I use Discussions Redesign as an instructor… – Instructure Community – 469515 (canvaslms.com)