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By Barb Stephens, June 5, 2019 7:14 pm

Learn about two new tools in BlueLine: the New Gradebook and Zoom integration. Then catch up on the latest updates in the Canvas Release Notes excerpt.

NOTE: On August 3, 2019 Internet Explorer 11 will no longer be supported as a Canvas browser.

New Gradebook

It’s here! The New Gradebook has been implemented across BlueLine. It’s an improved version of the Gradebook that makes grading more flexible and intuitive and elevates the Gradebook user experience.

When you click on “Grades” in the course navigation bar, you will see the New Gradebook, with a header area that looks like this:                   

The features include:

• The Gradebook menu displays the various Gradebooks that may be available in a course: Learning Mastery (if enabled), Individual View, and Gradebook History. These Gradebook types have been consolidated in one location.
• The View menu includes multiple options to sort and filter assignments.
• The Actions menu displays options to import a Gradebook CSV, or export the Gradebook CSV.

• The New Gradebook offers crosshairs and highlighting for improved orientation.
• Additionally, each row includes alternating colors to help with navigation.
• The Search field supports searching for users by user name.
• All options available in the Settings menu in the current Gradebook have been repurposed in the New Gradebook View menu.

To learn more, check the New Gradebook Users Group on the vendor site.

Zoom Integration

The Zoom LTI Pro app has been integrated into BlueLine and supports the ability to schedule/join/manage Zoom meetings.

Teachers can add the Zoom link to the Course Navigation bar:

1. Go to Course
2. Click Settings
3. Be on the Navigation tab
4. Drag/drop the Zoom button to the top “display these buttons” area
5. Click Save

NOTE:  Both BlueLine (Canvas) and Zoom operate off of your netid email, e.g. bbj12345@creighton.edu. You must use this netid email as your default email in both applications.

Release Notes June 1 & May 11, 2019

Compose Field Message Removal: The Compose Message window does not include an option to remove previously received messages. Individual messages can still be deleted from a conversation in the Conversations window by opening the message, selecting the Settings menu, and clicking the Delete link. This change improves accessibility within the Compose Message window.

DocViewer Enhancements:

Empty Rows and Columns: DocViewer previews of XLSX files render empty rows and columns to maintain formatting from the original document.

Excel Graph Rendering: Graphs created in spreadsheets and rendered in DocViewer display correct data and legend information.

Numbered Lists: Numbered lists are rendered correctly and display the correct information in the list in DocViewer.

Scatter Graph Trendlines: Scatter graphs in Word documents correctly display trendlines in DocViewer.

Grading and Quiz Logs Permissions: The Grades – Edit permission and the Quizzes – View Submission Log permission are required for a user to view quiz submission logs. Canvas code documentation has been updated to reflect these two associated permissions to view quiz submission logs.

For a complete production release updates, please see:

June 1 – Canvas Productions Release Notes: June 1, 2019.

May 11 – Canvas Productions Release Notes: May 11, 2019.

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By Barb Stephens, May 9, 2019 4:39 pm

You can access BlueLine (aka Canvas) from any browser on your Android or iOS device. However, for the best user experience, you should view Canvas via the mobile app.

To access Canvas mobile apps, you need to know Creighton’s URL: blueline.instructure.com

Canvas Student App Release Notes

View the Canvas Student Release Notes (Android 6.5)

In this update, the Canvas Student app supports a redesigned Syllabus page.

View the Canvas Student Release Notes (iOS 6.5)

In this update, the Canvas Student app supports redesigned Syllabus and Quizzes pages. Additionally, the app supports Siri shortcuts for course grades, opening augmented reality files, and double tapping to use the Apple Pencil eraser.

Canvas Teacher App Release Notes

View the Canvas Teacher Release Notes (Android 1.8)

In this update, the Canvas Teacher app supports viewing Modules.

View the Canvas Teacher Release Notes (iOS 1.8)

In this update, the Canvas Teacher app supports viewing Modules, opening augmented reality files, and double tapping the Apple Pencil to toggle between using the pencil and the eraser.

Mobile Guides

The Canvas by Instructure app is the mobile version of Canvas that helps you stay current with your courses anywhere you go.

Canvas Student Android Guide

Canvas Student iOS Guide

Canvas Teacher allows teachers to facilitate their courses on the go, both inside and outside the classroom. This app provides quick access to grading, communicating, and updating – three of the most frequent course facilitation tasks for teachers through Announcements, Assignments, Discussions and Quizzes.

Canvas Teacher Android Guide

Canvas Teacher iOS Guide

For assistance with any of these apps or documentation, please contact Canvas Support.

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By Barb Stephens, April 16, 2019 9:31 pm

Canvas, the application better known as BlueLine, operates on a three-week release cycle through which features are added or updated. Some highlights from the most recent release notes follow. For further clarification, check out the full release notes site.

Content Link Error Notification: The Notifications page includes a new alert for instructors to be notified about broken links in a course. If instructors want to be notified of broken links in their course, instructors can visit their Notification Preferences page and select the Content Link Error notification. Instructors are notified with both the location and content of the link error. This notification is triggered in the following conditions: the link cannot be accessed by students because of a permission error, the link is broken, or the link is unpublished.

SMS Message Content: Cellular (SMS) Notifications have been shortened to distribute one message about the related content. Additionally, content no longer includes direct URLs to access the content within the course. Users who prefer accessing the content directly should consider accessing the Canvas apps and enabling push notifications.

FIXES:

Concluded Course User Enrollments: In the Courses page, the Add People button only displays for active courses.

Course Nickname Length on Dashboards: Course nicknames are limited to a maximum of 59 characters.

Anonymous Grading and Instructor Notifications: Anonymous Grading assignments that are still muted do not include student names in instructor notifications about submission comments, student submitting on time, and students who re-submitted an assignment.

Concluded Course Rubric Access: Instructors can view and add rubrics from concluded courses.

Criterion Decimal Scores in Rubrics: Rubric total scores are rounded to four decimal places.

Criterion Point Edits in Rubrics: Edited point values display the edited value in the rubric.

Save Comment Button and Peer Review Rubrics: Peer Review rubrics do not display the Save Comment button after the peer review rubric has been saved.

Submission Downloads and Concluded Courses: Submission comments can be downloaded in concluded courses.

For a complete production release update, please see: Canvas Productions Release Notes: March 30, 2019.

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By Barb Stephens, March 12, 2019 7:28 pm

Canvas, the application better known as BlueLine, operates on a three-week release cycle through which features are added or updated. Some highlights from the most recent release notes follow. For further clarification, check out the full release notes site.

Discussions: Author Search Functionality

Users can search discussion topics by author name in addition to title. Any discussions that have been copied from a previous course do not include an author.

Dashboard: Course Card Icon Size

Users who have enabled course cards in the Dashboard can view the course card icons in a slightly smaller size than previously displayed. No functionality has been affected.

Conversations: Media File Name

Conversation messages include the file name of any media file uploaded or recorded within a message.

External Apps: Assignment State and Plagiarism Detection LTI Platform

Changing an assignment workflow state does not affect the plagiarism platform association. When a published assignment was unpublished and included no submissions, the plagiarism review settings were not retained and set back to None. Canvas code has been updated to retain the tool associations if the workflow state of the assignment is changed.

SpeedGrader: Deleted Discussion Post Attachments

Attachments from deleted discussion posts do not display in SpeedGrader. When a discussion post was deleted that included an attached file, the file was not removed when the discussion was viewed in SpeedGrader. This behavior affected instructors as they could see the file but not the post where it belonged. Canvas code has been updated to remove attachments from deleted discussion posts.

For a complete production release update, please see: Canvas Productions Release Notes: Mar. 9, 2019.

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By Barb Stephens, March 12, 2019 7:25 pm

Canvas, the application better known as BlueLine, operates on a three-week release cycle through which features are added or updated. Some highlights from the most recent release notes follow. For further clarification, check out the full release notes site.

Rich Content Editor: Accessibility Checker Link-Formatting

When a user opens the information link in the Accessibility Checker, the “Learn More” text at the bottom of the menu window has been expanded to include more description about the linked reference.

Assignments: Muted Assignments and Peer-Review Comments

When a peer-review assignment is muted, students can view peer-review comments from other students. However, comments from instructors continue to be hidden until the assignment is unmuted.

Assignments: Anonymous Grading and Peer Reviews

When anonymous grading is enabled in a peer-review assignment, students can view peer reviews without error.

Notifications: Anonymous Late Submission Notifications

Notifications about late submissions in anonymous assignments do not display the names of the students with the late submission.

Quizzes: Fudge Points in Quizzes

Fudge points can be changed to zero after being assigned a non-zero value.

Rich Content Editor: HTML5 Media Recorder Video Interface

When Canvas does not detect a webcam with a user’s device, the media recorder displays the video interface.

SpeedGrader: Anonymous Moderated Assignment Student Links

Student submission links for anonymous moderated assignments link to the correct submission in SpeedGrader.

SpeedGrader: Group Assignments and External Tool Submissions

Group assignments submitted through an external tool, such as Google Drive, Dropbox, or  Office 365, display in SpeedGrader.

For a complete production release update, please see: Canvas Productions Release Notes: Feb. 16, 2019.

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By Barb Stephens, January 29, 2019 7:05 pm

Canvas, the application better known as BlueLine, operates on a three-week release cycle through which features are added or updated. Some highlights from the most recent release notes follow. For further clarification, check out the full release notes site.

SpeedGrader: Rubric Additional Comments Text Field

When an instructor creates a rubric for an assignment and views the rubric in SpeedGrader, clicking the Additional Comments icon displays a comments field directly below the selected criterion. Instructors can add comments for the criterion, save the comment, and view the comment directly below the criterion. Previously, the comment would not display until the rubric was saved.

Course Settings: Link Validator Email Links

When the Link Validator was started in a course, the Link Validator generated an error when it encountered an email link, as individual email links cannot be validated. Canvas code has been updated to not include email links as part of the Link Validator.

Course Settings: Multiple Section Enrollment Statistics

When students with active enrollments were enrolled in multiple sections, the Statistics page Active Students and Unaccepted Students sections counted each student multiple times. Canvas code has been updated to count students in statistics by ID and not by section enrollment.

Files: Downloaded File Names and Spaces

When a file was downloaded from a course, the file was downloaded with the file name instead of the display name. Additionally, any spaces within the name were replaced with a plus symbol, which was inconsistent when uploading files. Canvas code has been updated to use display names and retain spaces in file downloads.

Files: Restored Files and Duplicate File Names

When a previously deleted file was restored in a course, duplicate file names could exist in the same folder. This behavior affected other Canvas features such as ePub exports and offline course content. Canvas code has been updated to amend the file name if a file with the same name already exists by adding a 1 at the end of the file.

Modules: Module Item Publish State

When a new module was published in a course, the publish icon for all items within the module did not update until the page was refreshed. Canvas code has been updated to accurately display icons according to the module item’s status.

SpeedGrader: Draft Comments and Grades Participation Count

When a draft comment was created in SpeedGrader, the draft comment was being counted as an update for the Grades page and was counted in the indicator within the Course Navigation Menu’s Grades link. When a student viewed the Grades link, the Grades page did not display any new activity for the affected assignment. Canvas code has been updated to disregard draft comments as new activity in the Grades page.

SpeedGrader: Student List Menu Icon

In the SpeedGrader sidebar, the student list menu icon was not visible for all browsers. Canvas code has been updated to always display the student list menu icon.

For a complete production release update, please see: Canvas Productions Release Notes: Jan. 26, 2019.

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By Barb Stephens, January 15, 2019 8:15 pm

You can access BlueLine (aka Canvas) from any browser on your Android or iOS device. However, for the best user experience, you should view Canvas via the mobile app.

To access Canvas mobile apps, you need to know Creighton’s URL: blueline.instructure.com

Mobile App Guides

The links include how to download the mobile app and guide you on using the mobile app:

Mobile Guides – Canvas Teacher

Canvas Teacher allows teachers to facilitate their courses on the go, both inside and outside the classroom. This app provides quick access to grading, communicating, and updating – three of the most frequent course facilitation tasks for teachers through Announcements, Assignments, Discussions and Quizzes.

Canvas Teacher Android Guide

Canvas Teacher iOS Guide

Mobile Guides – Canvas by Instructure

The Canvas by Instructure app is the mobile version of Canvas that helps you stay current with your courses anywhere you go.

Canvas Student Android Guide

Canvas Student iOS Guide

For assistance with any of these apps or documentation, please contact Canvas Support.

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By Barb Stephens, January 8, 2019 6:38 pm

Canvas, the application better known as BlueLine, operates on a three-week release cycle through which features are added or updated. Some highlights from the most recent release notes follow. For further clarification, check out the full release notes site.

Course Settings: Course Link Validator Design Enhancements

The Course Link Validator page includes design enhancements for link clarity, including identifying broken Course Card images. The page description content has been updated to clarify the validator searches course content for invalid or unreachable links and images. Invalid means the link or image is no longer valid and the content should be removed or replaced. Unreachable means the link or image could not be displayed because of a situation with the host server, which may be temporarily unavailable. Unpublished content in the course is also displayed in the validation results if the Show Links to Unpublished Content checkbox is selected. Once the link validation process has completed, the page displays the following design enhancements:

• Content is grouped by object type (e.g. assignment, discussion, page)
• The object type is displayed below the link to each content item
• Each broken content item displays its relevant object type icon
• Broken external URL items in Modules are grouped by module
• Broken content within an object is identified as either a link or an image, with the appropriate icon displaying next to the broken content
• Broken content displays the name of the item as it displays in the Rich Content Editor
• Course Cards are a supported object type, which displays any course images added from Flickr that have been deleted

Course Settings: Course Dates and Functionality Clarifications

The Course Details page and Sections tab have been updated to clarify term and course dates as well as the options to restrict students from viewing the course. No functionality has been affected.

• The course date explanation text has been updated to suggest instructors verify the term dates before modifying course dates.
• The checkbox to limit participation in the course includes clarification for how the checkbox affects the dates in the course.
• The checkboxes to restrict students from viewing the course also includes clarification about whether the course or term dates are considered to be the course start and end date, depending on the course date settings.

Calendar: Due Date Calendar Display

When an assignment included a due date on or after 11:31 pm (or 23:31), the time did not display next to the assignment title. Canvas code has been updated to display the time for assignments due on or after 11:31 pm.

Courses: Multiple Instructor Enrollments and Course Search

When the first page of results for a course search included a large number of instructor enrollments, the page was unable to load and generated an error. Canvas code has been updated to display up to 25 names in the Teacher column.

Dashboard: Event Date Order

When an event was created for a course, the event displayed first in the To Do list, regardless of date. This behavior prevented users from viewing the most current To Do items for their courses. Canvas code has been updated to display calendar events among other items in the To Do list in chronological order.

Notifications: Anonymous Grading and Submission Comments

When anonymous grading was enabled for an assignment, and students made comments on their submissions, submission comment notifications to the instructor displayed the student’s name. Canvas code has been updated to anonymize student names in submission comment notifications.

For a complete production release update, please see: Canvas Productions Release Notes: Jan. 5, 2019.

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By Barb Stephens, December 10, 2018 8:02 pm

Canvas, the application better known as BlueLine, operates on a three-week release cycle through which features are added or updated. Some highlights from the most recent release notes follow. For further clarification, check out the full release notes site.

Course Settings: Navigation Home Link Menu Removal

In the Navigation page, the Home link does not include a Settings menu. This change aligns consistency with intended functionality of keeping the Home link at the top of the Course Navigation Menu.

Dashboard: Card View Course Ordering

Course cards can be manually ordered in the Card View Dashboard. This change allows users to place course cards in a specific order.

• In the Card View Dashboard, users can select the Options menu for a course and move the card to another location in the Dashboard. Depending on the placement of the existing card, cards may be moved to the top of the Dashboard, ahead or behind a specific card, or to the bottom of the Dashboard.
• Cards can also be manually dragged and dropped to another location in the Dashboard.
• Once a dashboard card has been reordered, new courses added to the dashboard always display at the end of all existing courses.

Rich Content Editor: HTML5 Media Recorder

HTML5 is used instead of flash within the Rich Content Editor in Firefox and Chrome browsers. This feature is also supported for students in the Submission Details page and for instructors in SpeedGrader. This change allows recorded media without requiring flash within the Firefox and Chrome browsers. Internet Explorer and Safari browsers do not support this functionality. Users will not notice any change and still require the use of Flash.

Dashboard: Midnight Due Dates

When an assignment was due at 12 am (00:00:00) in the user’s local time zone, the List View Dashboard showed that the item was due at 11:59pm (23:59:59) the same day instead, which affected students as they thought they had an additional day to complete their coursework. Canvas code has been updated to display due dates at the same time they are created and not adjust the time for one minute earlier.

Settings: Flickr Course Card Image Search Warning

When a user searched in Flickr for a course card image in Course Settings, Flickr results did not always return safe results even though the search is designed to only return safe images. This behavior occurred when Flickr image owners did not include a safety setting within the image when it was uploaded. Canvas code has been updated include a warning about search results when searching for a course card image.

For a complete production release update, please see: Canvas Productions Release Notes: Dec. 8, 2018.

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By Barb Stephens, November 27, 2018 6:47 pm

Canvas, the application better known as BlueLine, operates on a three-week release cycle through which features are added or updated. Some highlights from the most recent release notes follow. For further clarification, check out the full release notes site.

Rich Content Editor: Embedded Image File Uploads

Users can directly upload a file to embed in the Rich Content Editor. This change allows users to upload and embed files without first having to upload the image to Canvas.

Assignments: Due and Availability Date Seconds Adjustment

In the 2018-09-15 release, Canvas code was updated to always record assignment times as hh:mm:59, even if the assignment was changed to a non-59 minute value. This behavior caused any manually changed assignments to allow to be submitted almost one minute after the due or availability date. Canvas code has been updated to the previous behavior for assignment submission times, which defaults the seconds value to hh:mm:59 for any minute set at 59, but sets the seconds value to hh:mm:00 for any non-59 minute times.

Assignments: External Tool Submission Uploads

When a student tried to submit an assignment by uploading a file through an external tool, the screen generated an error and the file selection button was not displayed. Canvas code has been updated to display the file selection button for external tool assignments.

Calendar: Allow Students to See Time Slots Scheduler Option

When a new Scheduler appointment was created with the option to allow students to see who has signed up for time slots, the option only allowed students to view the information until all time slots had been filled. Canvas code has been updated to clarify the checkbox setting as only showing time slots if slots are still available.

Course Import: Question Bank Images

When a quiz question was added from a question bank, the question was edited in the quiz, and then the course was copied or imported, any images in the quiz question were removed. However, images were not affected in the original course except that images were rendered inaccessible. Canvas code has been updated to not remove file verifiers associated with a quiz on course copy.

Notifications: Anonymous Grading Late Assignment Notifications

When an instructor received late assignment notifications for students who submitted a late assignment, and the assignment was set to be graded anonymously, the notifications included student names and links to the assignment that could not be accessed. For non-anonymous submissions, notifications include the student name and a link to the student’s submission details page. Canvas code has been updated to anonymize student names in email notifications and include a link to the submission in SpeedGrader, which is also anonymized.

For a complete production release update, please see: Canvas Productions Release Notes: Nov. 17, 2018.