Coming Soon to Production
The product and engineering teams continue to work hard on Assignment Enhancements for Students. The following items are now available in your beta environment and scheduled to be available for all in production with our October 27th deploy.
- Path from student grades page
Previously, when a student clicked on an assignment name from the student grades page, they were still directed to the old assignment feedback view. Students are now directed to the updated, enhanced view.
- Webcam button icon change
Our webcam button had the image of an adorable panda photographer. While this was a fun image, it was inconsistent with other button images and may have drawn student attention to the option more than intended. This image has been updated to a camera icon, which is much more consistent with the other button images.
- Restrict file upload types update
When file types are restricted for file upload assignments, if image file extensions (e.g. PNG, JPEG) are not accepted, the webcam button will not display as an option.
- Files button terminology update
When file upload is selected as the submission type, students are presented with various locations from which to upload. The files button has been renamed to Canvas Files to clearly indicate where the student will upload files from when selected.
- External Tool (LTI) support
External tool (LTI) submissions are better supported in Assignment Enhancements. Additionally, the placement of the External Tool buttons have been adjusted. Instead of displaying within the File Uploads option, installed tools for a course display as buttons next to all other submission types. If an assignment includes multiple tools, the External Tool options may be accessed via the More button, which we have reintroduced with this deploy to eliminate the confusion and clutter associated with many tools being available for student use.
In addition, the assignment page displays the type of file that is returned by the External Tool. For instance, if the tool returns a file, the file will be added to the draft assignment’s list of uploaded files. However, if the tool returns a link, the assignment displays a preview of the linked content. All returned files from an External Tool are retained as an assignment draft until the assignment is submitted or the attempt is canceled.
- Studio known issue resolved
With the updates to better support external tool (LTI), the known issue for failure of Studio submissions has been resolved.
What's Next?
Assignment Enhancements will include the Immersive Reader option when enabled with the November 10th deploy.
For users with an observer role, we currently redirect to the non-enhanced assignment view across their account. In order for observers to support students within courses that have Assignment Enhancements enabled, it is best that they see the same view as the students they observe. We will continue to work on updating all observer flows to the enhanced assignment views in our next several sprints.
