Canvas Updates, 2/18/2017

In this update, Canvas released a new mechanism to see information about a student and interact with that student, and a new discussion setting.

Context Cards for Students

Provided by Instructure

Canvas has provided a new mechanism to see high-level information about a student and send them a message. Context cards are meant to be a simplified overview of a student’s progress. The context is generated from grades in the Gradebook and standard page view and participation activity in course analytics. Mobile data is not included unless a user accesses Canvas directly through a mobile browser, or if a user accesses content within the mobile app that redirects to a mobile browser.

Sample Context Card

Fields available within the Context Card
Peter the Anteater Context Card
  • Profile picture (if available)
  • Student name: view the student’s user profile page
  • Mail icon: send a message directly to the student from the page
  • Course name and section: view the name of the course and section (section name only included for courses with multiple sections)
  • Last login: view the last login date (does not display if the student has never logged in);  the card only displays the time when the login is on the current date, the day of the week when the login was within the current week, and the full date for any later logins
  • Grades: access the student’s grades page
  • Analytics: access the student’s analytics page
  • Current grade: view current grade as displayed in the Gradebook
  • Number of missing assignments: view the total of missing assignments based on student analytics data, which generates data for both online and no-submission assignments in Canvas; for submissions not submitted online, assignment calculations may not be entirely accurate as they are attempted based on the assignment’s grade and when the assignment was graded
  • Number of late assignments: view the total of late assignments based on assignment due date
  • Number of last graded items in the course: view a maximum of the last 10 recently graded assignments with the assignment’s grade
  • Participation activity compared to class: view the standard deviation of the student’s participation in the course compared to other students (none, low, moderate, or high)
  • Page views compared to class: view the standard deviation of the student’s page views in the course compared to other students (none, low, moderate, or high)

Learn more about context cards

 

Updated display of deleted posts within a discussion

Provided by Instructure

When instructors allow students to delete discussion replies, or when an instructor deletes a discussion reply for any user, the reply was previously shown to all users as being deleted. If there were multiple deleted replies in a discussion thread, the discussion could become difficult to navigate among the deleted replies.

In discussions, deleted replies no longer display as part of the discussion thread for all users. However, if instructors need to view notices of deleted individual replies, they can view them using the Show icon located in the discussion bar. The icon also displays to TAs. If a reply is deleted as part of another reply in the discussion, the deleted reply cannot be hidden and still shows to all users as being deleted.