New LACCD Canvas Enhancements & Updates!

GREAT NEWS! There are some new resources available within Canvas that can enhance user experiences.

Below is a list with links to find out more about them:

• Ally – this is a tool that will help students access your materials in multiple formats. Here is information about this tool Instructor Introduction to Canvas Ally. For your reference, here is the information on the student version of the tool Ally for Students.

Please note: At this point, the only feature that will be turned on in Ally is the alternative formats option for files. The accessibility ratings will be coming later.

There are also updates coming to Canvas!

These are the Canvas updates that will appear automatically (you don’t have to do anything to turn it on):

• Change assignment due dates in bulk: With this feature, you can quickly change the due date for more than one assignment at a time. For more, see this guide on how to bulk update due dates and availability dates
• Dashboard courses separated between published and unpublished: With this new feature, all of the courses in your dashboard will be separated into two categories: published and unpublished. You will also now be able to publish a course directly from your dashboard. For more, see the Canvas Release notes on instructor publishing improvements
• Mute notifications by course: You now have the option to mute all notifications for a specific course. Please note that if you enable this, ALL notifications will be muted for that course. By default, notifications will continue to be on for all courses. For more about this, please see this video on muting notifications by course

These are the Canvas updates that you have the ability to turn on at the course/user level:

• The New Rich Content Editor: Canvas has made some improvements to the Rich Content Editor (RCE) that is used to create content in pages, assignments, discussions, etc. You have the option to turn this update on now or to do nothing and continue to use the current Rich Content Editor. Take a look at the New Rich Content Editor Guide and this video on the Rich Content Editor updates to help decide if you would like to make this update now.
  • If you would like to turn this feature on now, you will have to do this for each course. To do this:
    • Click on Settings
    • Click on Feature Options
    • Toggle the Rich Content Editor Enhancements to on
    • Be aware that when you turn this on, it will turn on for students as well so you may want to send them a quick announcement about it.
• A related update that will only work if you turn on the new Rich Content Editor is RCE auto-save. Auto-save will allow users to access auto-saved content. For more, please see this short video on Rich Content Editor Auto-Save