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Changes often force us to adapt in ways we’ve never experienced, which can be a major driver of personal (and even professional) growth and development.

Maintenance Window - Systems Unavailable

Canvas is managed by Instructure and has their own timeline for update and fixes. 

Periodically functionality will be added, changed, or removed in Canvas. Announcements are made on the Instructure Calendar. Other changes may not be directly related to Canvas, such as browser updates, which are not associated with Canvas releases. Archived updates can be viewed. 

Since Canvas is cloud based, Cal Poly does not house it on any of our campus computers. You can view Instructure's System Status and Incidents reports. 

In an effort to better manage required maintenance across all customer instances, Instructure (Canvas vendor) will be implementing regular Canvas maintenance windows for each region. These two-hour windows will be scheduled for the 1st & 3rd Thursday of each month. Most maintenance windows will take place sometime between the hours of 12:00am and 4:00am local time. Even though the windows are two hours each, they don’t expect users would experience downtime for more than a few minutes.

Monthly Updates

Feb. 17, 2024 Enhancements

  • New Quiz: Practice Quiz Migration - Classic Quizzes' practice quizzes are migrated to New Quizzes with zero-point quiz settings enabled by default
  • New Quiz: Export CSV - Item Analysis report can be downloaded, encompassing all metrics and Answer Frequency Summary tables.

Dec. 16, 2023 Enhancements

 

Oct. 25, 2023 Enhancements

  • Notifications: Discussion Push for new topics and replies 

 

Sept. 27, 2023 Enhancements

 

Aug. 19, 2023 Enhancements

 
July 15, 2023 Enhancements
 
Jun. 17, 2023 Enhancements

Apr. 15, 2023 Enhancements
Mar. 18, 2023 Enhancements
 
Dec. 17, 2022 Enhancements
  • Grades Update: improved layout for grades, rubrics and comments.
  • RCE in NEW Quizzes [Instructure disabled this feature Jan. 10 due to errors to copy New Quizzes didn't work with RCE (images, links or math equations).]
 
Nov. 29, 2022 Enhancements
Oct. 26, 2022 Enhancements
  • Speedgrader: Speech-to-text recognized in Chrome Browsers
     
Sept. 28, 2022 Enhancements
  • External Link Icon Update
  • New Quiz Speedgrader Grade Sync Update
  • RCE Icon Maker: use custom images
     
Apr. 16, 2022 Enhancements
 
Mar. 19, 2022 Enhancements
 
Jan. 15, 2022 Enhancements
 
Dec. 15 Enhancements
  • Content Import Warning Message - As part of course import processes throughout Canvas, Canvas displays a warning message about overwriting existing content.
  • Gradebook Late Policy Support - allows authorized users to copy courses and retain Late Policy settings in the Gradebook.
  • Notifications Delivery Details - allows users to know what date and time notifications are sent from Canvas, as notification delivery varies among users.
  • Image Options Percentage - allows users to enter percentages when changing the size of an image.
  • To-Do (teacher) SpeedGrader Link Tab Setting - allows instructors to set their preference on managing To Do tabs in Canvas.
 
Nov. 20 Enhancements
 
Oct. 23 Enhancements
 
Aug. 21 Enhancements
  • Instructor New Quiz Print - Instructors can now print New Quiz Answer Keys and Banks. 
  • Accessibility Checker in the RCE - the accessibility checker in the Rich Content Editor displays the issues within the RCE content. Instructors can enable/disable this feature via the Settings > Feature Previews - turn on Accessibility Checker Notifications
 
July 17 Enhancements
  • New Quiz: Module workflow improvements: When a student navigates to a new quiz or resumes a new quiz from Modules, the quiz details page is displayed in the module. When the quiz is started or resumed, the quiz opens to the full screen interface. When the quiz is submitted, the student is returned back to the quiz details page in the module.
  • SMS notifications removed: SMS notifications for Announcements and Grading have been removed from Canvas. 
 
June 19 Enhancements
 
May 15 Enhancements
 
Apr. 17 Enhancements
  • New Quiz Multiple Attempts: menu includes an option to retain the first score for grading when multiple submission attempts are allowed.
  • Faculty course settings changes to display Term and Course. To edit the Start and End date/time, faculty must choose Settings > Participation - "Course".
 
Mar. 20 Enhancements
  • New Quiz Support within Modules: when faculty add an item to a module and selects a quiz, the Create Quiz option displays both the New Quizzes and Classic Quizzes quiz engines. New Quizzes is the default, but faculty can switch to Classic Quizzes and create a name for the quiz.
  • Filters for Learning Mastery Data: allows faculty to view outcomes data in the Learning Mastery Gradebook for students who no longer have an active enrollment in their course.
  • RCE File Preview Enhancements: allows users to control the display of the file preview.
  • Reassign Assignment in the Speedgrader: allows faculty to provide feedback and reassign an assignment to an individual student, which places the assignment back in the List View Dashboard as another assignment to complete.
 
Feb. 20 Enhancements 
  • MS Immersive Reader (2/12): enhances your reading experience on Pages by improving accessibility and boosting reading comprehension.

    Starting 2/20...
  • VIEW Ungraded as 0: allows instructors to view student grades as if all ungraded assignments were worth zero points. (which is a visual change only and does not affect any grades). Turn it on via the Gradebook > View > View Ungraded as 0. 
    Gradebook view ungraded as 0
  • Import - Final Grade Override Scores: When an institution has enabled final grade overrides, and an instructor has enabled the option in the Gradebook, the instructor can use the CSV export file to enter and upload final grade override scores.
  • Pretty HTML Editor: While viewing the HTML, you can now see colors to help separate the HTML code. 
  • MathJax and LaTEX Enhancements: allows users to use equations in more areas of Canvas and manage equations more efficiently
 
Jan. 18 Changes
 
Jan. 16, 2021 Enhancements
Dec. 19 Enhancements
Oct. 17 Enhancements
  • Global Navigation - History
  • Notification Preference Interface Changes
  • MathJax Equation Editor Improvements: The MathJax JS library has been improved to render equations in a more accessible format and promote ease of use. Math equations created anywhere in Canvas will be rendered as MathML. 
 
Aug 15 Enhancements
 
June 20, 2020 Enhancements

 

Maintenance Windows for Canvas and 3rd Party Tools

There are times that software will not be available due to update or patches that Cal Poly will not be able to change since these dates are managed by other companies. 

Dec. 20, 2020: 1 - 9am ET - Pearson
All MyLab & Mastering courses, Revel, Enhanced Revel, MyLabsPlus, Learning Catalytics/Live Response, Pearson Writer, Writing Solutions, and MediaShare. You and your students will be unable to access your courses for the entire maintenance window.   

  • This impacts all courses including those integrated with a learning management system such as Blackboard, Canvas, Brightspace by D2L, or Moodle.  
  • When you and your students attempt to access your courses, you’ll see a splash page about the maintenance work.  

May 2, 2020: 8am - Noon PST - TurnItIn
Requires an emergency maintenance window as a pre-emptive measure to avoid rescheduled maintenance work being carried out by a third-party network provider during the week. During this time, there may be an interruption to our services. We are planning for this work to only take the first two hours of this window, however we ask that you plan for the full duration. Customers using Turnitin through the following services will encounter a service outage and will have to retry their submissions after this time.

May 1, 2020: 1:00am - 2:00am MST  - Canvas Update
Performing maintenance for our Google Apps and Office 365 LTIs, which will last for up to 1 hour.  If you have one of these tools installed in your account you may be unable to access that tool for the duration of this maintenance.

 

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