Canvas Corner: New Canvas Features – Smart Search and AI Discussion Summaries

Canvas has two new features that you can now use in your courses. The first is called Smart Search, which will allow you and your students to search a course for a specific term or topic. The second is Discussion Summaries, which will allow you to get a quick summary of all the responses from a discussion in your class. They both use artificial intelligence to gather your results.  

Smart Search 

You can use Smart Search to quickly search across all the content on pages, announcements, discussion instructions, and assignment descriptions in a course. You can search for a keyword or enter a query in a sentence form. The search will deliver a list of the relevant places in the course related to your query. It cannot, however, search documents, images, video content, or student submissions and posts. 

This would allow an instructor to efficiently locate all relevant content or instructions related to a query. Students also have access to this tool, and instructors can recommend that students use it when studying or looking to review specific content, as well as to browse assignments, discussion instructions, or announcements for a specific topic, due date, or instructions. As the instructor, the search will deliver results that are unpublished, with a tag to indicate that status. Students will not see unpublished content in their results.  

Results are linked so that instructors or students can easily go to the relevant course pages. There are also tags with due dates for assignments and discussions, along with labels showing what kind of content it is and which module it comes from, if it is located in a module.  

To use the Smart Search feature, click on the Smart Search link in the navigation panel on the left (1). If the link is not visible in the list, go to the navigation link settings and enable it. Enter your search term in the search bar and click the “Search” button (2). The results will populate below as links with appropriate tags and labelling (3). You can also use filters to narrow the search to specific areas of the course (4). When filtering content, be sure to click “Apply” at the bottom. Finally, you can choose to deliver feedback to Instructure (Canvas) if you choose to do so (5).  

For more information on Canvas Smart Search, please visit: What is Smart Search?

Discussion Summaries 

Faculty can now leverage artificial intelligence to get a summary of a class discussion in Canvas. The tool can be used to get a general summary and overview of a discussion thread, or specify a key point, idea, or question to summarize. This will allow faculty to quickly get a sense of what students have posted, or to look deeper into what they are saying about something specific related to the course content or the discussion prompt. This feature can save instructors time and allow for more effective analysis in large class settings. Administrators can also use the feature to get a sense of how discussion assignments are being utilized by students. This feature is not available to students.  

To use this tool, locate and click on the “Open Summary” button on the lower-right side of the discussion prompt area (1). A new box will open below. Click the “Summarize” button to get a general summary of the discussion (2). You can use the search bar to narrow the search to specific information (3). The results will be displayed below (4). If you choose to narrow the focus to a specific query you will see a label indicating how many topic-specific searches you have done for the day (5). You are allowed up to twenty-five. You can also choose to give feedback to Canvas (6).  

For more information on Discussion Summaries, please visit: What are Discussion Summaries?  or How do I use Discussion Summaries as an instructor?