The good news is, there isn’t much to worry about with Canvas at the end of the year. It will automatically convert your course to read-only for students and roll your course into Past Enrollments. When next year’s course shell appears you will be able to import last year’s course content with a few clicks.
There are a few things you can do if you’d like to make adjustments to your course over the summer or if you like to have a just-in-case copy. Peruse the items below for more information, save it at this link, or get a PDF copy here.
In New Quizzes, this feature allows Instructors to add content as part of the question stem and make portions of the content fillable in the student response.
Change Benefit
This change allows instructors to create fill-in-the-blank questions with rich content such as scientific or mathematical formulas or a table. Additionally, instructors can format fill-in-the-blank questions to appear on separate, distinct lines.
Feature Workflow
New Quizzes question editor
When adding a fill-in-the-blank question, type a statement in the rich content editor and surround a word with backticks to indicate where a student fills in the answer.
Fill in the Blank Answer Options
In the Answer Type drop-down menu, select the Dropdown option [1], enter the correct answers and distractor answers, if needed. Possible Answer Types include a dropdown, open entry, or word bank [2].
If you are retiring from teaching, changing roles, or changing grades, you might be wondering how you can best share some of your teaching materials with colleagues from your department or team. This post will offer some suggestions. If you are retiring or leaving the district, a separate email will be sent to you regarding how you can use Google’s services to make copies of some of your materials for your personal Google account and return district technology at the end of the school year. Please be on the look out for that email if it applies to you.
Share Google Content with Colleagues
You will want to make sure that a colleague you want to share files with is made the owner of a document or folder. You can change this if you are the current owner.
This option is best if you are leaving the district. Change this setting after you have used Google Transfer or Download.
If you are not leaving the district and want your files shared, but not altered, you might download a folder and then re-upload it to your Drive naming it “3rd Grade Originals.” This will allow you to maintain a copy of your versions of the documents.
Please be mindful about checking folders before you share them to ensure confidential, student information is not shared.
Share Canvas Course Content
You are able to export your Canvas course as an IMSCC ZIP file that can be uploaded into many Learning Management Systems (if you are leaving the district) or shared via a thumb drive.
If you want to share your course with another teacher, you can make a copy of your course (found in Settings). When you make the copy you can select the specific content you are willing to share, give it a name (i.e. Bullock Shared US History) and then add your colleague(s) as a teacher in the course. Finally, to make your course more widely available to others at P-CCS you can export your course to Canvas Commons, when you export you can choose to make it viewable to the public or only to P-CCS teachers.
Share Video Content
While it is best practice for instructional videos to be made by the existing teacher, it might be helpful for others to reference your video lessons. If you would like to share your video lessons, we recommend this workflow:
Upload videos to Canvas Studio, if not there already
Organize videos into Collections (i.e. Algebra 1) Instructions to move Media into Collections
UPDATE: Canvas and Google have worked together to RESOLVE the issue described in last month’s blog post shown below. Thank you for your patience.
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Some teachers are experiencing Canvas assignment submissions that are subsequently inaccessible to them. This has been occurring when a Canvas assignment is created and students load a file from Google Drive. When the teachers open Speedgrader, instead of seeing a preview of the document they see a link to an unknown file type that they are unable to download or view.
Error teachers experience with Google Drive submissions
Students will have a clue that submission didn’t come through correctly when they select and attach an item from Google Drive they will see this:
Students will see this when their attachment is unsuccessful. They should follow the directions linked below to upload the file as a PDF.
This is a Google LTI issue and we are currently working on a resolution. There are several potential workarounds:
You have always been able to view graphs on who viewed you video and for how long.
Now you can also see what parts of the video get played or replayed most often so you can better understand what was useful for students.
You can see a viewer list and easily see the completion rate for each.
If you want to chat more about the possibilities with Canvas Studio, submit a tech ticket and we’d be happy to answer your questions and walk through it with you.
Highlighted below are a number of new features that will be available in Canvas after this Saturday’s (4/16) update.
Default Assignment Due Time
An oft-requested feature that will be welcome by many. Currently, when creating an assignment, the default time for that assignment is set for 11:59 p.m. This feature will allow assignment makers to change the default due time to a different time.
To change the default due time, go into your course settings, locate a box called “Default Due Time”, click into the box and change to your preferred time.
2. Apply Score to Ungraded Assignments
The Apply Score to Ungraded Assignments feature allows scores to be applied to multiple ungraded submissions at once. This change allows instructors to apply scores to ungraded submissions en masse from an assignment group and total column menus in the Gradebook.
To use, locate the options menu from an assignment group or the Total column in the Gradebook and select Apply Score to Ungraded.
3. Rich Content Editor(RCE) Icon Maker
Another requested feature is the ability to create icons from right within Canvas. This feature change provides instructors the ability to incorporate simple icons for their courses without using an external tool. The Icon Maker allows simple customized iconography to be created directly within the Rich Content Editor.
To use, when in Rich Content Editor(RCE) locate an icon with various shapes. Click on this icon, and follow the instructions to build the icon.
Some of the other new features are New Quiz abilities and Emojis in Submissions.
Need to quickly change a course due date? Head to the Calendar in Canvas (on the far left of your screen on the Global Navigation Menu). From there, you can drag and drop an assignment due date to a new day.
Did you know that New Analytics provides detailed reports about grades, activity in Canvas, and missing assignments? Take a look at the information below to learn more. This can be used to support your teaching with data and an easy way to communicate with students and families that need support.
*Credit to Nicole Pate of Del Sol Academy for the informational slides. Link to slides.
Submit a tech ticket if you have questions about this feature.
In addition to accessing IXL via Clever, we have recently integrated IXL with Canvas to provide the following functionality (and more) within Canvas courses.
Quick Launcher
Allows student to quickly access a few of the most valuable areas of IXL.com
Activity Selector
Allows teachers to create a direct links to an IXL skill, or the Diagnostic, from within Canvas
Activity Viewer/Launcher
Allows students or teachers to access an assigned IXL skill or Diagnostic
In sum, IXL’s integration with Canvas allows teachers to access IXL through Canvas and create activities using IXL skills or the Real-Time Diagnostic. Students can also access IXL through Canvas and navigate directly to certain sections of IXL, including skills or the diagnostic as selected by their teachers.
Check out the resources below to help you take full advantage of the integration features:
High School teachers of PCEP year-long courses, please be aware that Grading Periods will be set up in your Canvas courses denoting each semester.
Year-Long PCEP Courses
Teachers will have access to make edits, give feedback, and grade assignments in Canvas for first semester until 11:59 pm on February 2, 2022. After that date, the grades will not be editable.
Students will continue to have access to submit assignments with due dates in the first semester UNLESS YOU HAVE AN AVAILABLE UNTIL DATE OF JAN. 28 OR EARLIER. You can edit those dates in bulk by following the steps here.
Semester 2 began January 31st, 2022. You can filter your grade book to view assignments with due dates in the Semester 2 grading period by following the steps here.
If you want to share your course with another teacher, you can 
