As the semester draws to a close, we want to make you aware of several important items impacting your Canvas courses. If we see other issues or updates to Canvas, we will keep you posted using the blog. Please bookmark that page in your Internet browser for easy reference in the future.
Downloading Scores from your Canvas Grade book
If you download your Canvas grade book scores (as a CSV/Excel file) you might see incorrect scores in the ”Final Score” column. This is a bug that was recently fixed by Instructure. However, the fix is not retroactive and only fixes new Canvas courses. Please see this PDF tutorial for details on how to perform the one-time fix in your course.
Student and Instructor Access to Canvas courses after the end date (Today)
Unlike in Blackboard courses, faculty and student access to Canvas courses is somewhat limited after the course “end date”. The course “end date” for fall courses is today (December 9, 2011). If you want your students to be able to submit assignments or complete quizzes after this date, or if you want to be able to grade assignments or quizzes after this date, you can change the course “end date” in your course settings. Click here to view the PDF tutorial. (Go to your Canvas course and click on Settings -> Course Details -> Edit Course Details. Then change the end date and click Update Course Details.)
Directing Students to your Canvas Course (from Blackboard)
If you are planning to teach your spring course(s) in Canvas and would like redirect students from the Blackboard Vista section to Canvas, please let us know. We can put a generic template in your Blackboard course that informs students that their course is in Canvas and provides them a link to the Canvas login page.
Note: If you have content in your Blackboard course, students will have the ability to access and submit assignments in Blackboard unless they are redirected to the course to Canvas.
If you want us to place a redirect in your Blackboard Vista course, you may submit your request using this web form or reply to this email and include the following information for each course that requires a redirect page in Blackboard Vista:
1. Course department and number (ENGL 1010)
2. Course CRN
Letter Grade Scheme Feature
Instructure has recently released a feature that allows you set your own custom grading scheme (percent) and then your Canvas grade book will display a letter grade for each student, next to their total percent in the “Total” column. For detailed instructions on how to enable this feature in your Canvas course, please see the PDF tutorial on our blog site (located under Training -> Faculty How’To’s -> Grading Schemes)
Canvas iPhone/iPad App
Instructure released a new app for iPhone and iPad yesterday. Although the app does not do everything Canvas can do in a web browser, it is a great way for you and your students to view course content and communicate with each other when you are not at a computer. The app is called “Canvas for iOS”, and you can find it by searching the app store for “Canvas” or “Instructure”. (You’ll need to be using iOS 5 for this app to work.)