What’s New in Canvas: the 2021 edition!

Every month we report on changes to Canvas, whether it be bug fixes, interface changes, or new features! The New Features are certainly the most exciting and there’s a little something for everyone in 2021. Here’s some of the newest and greatest things to be released in Canvas this past year.

1. Student Annotation Assignments
   Instructors can use an annotated assignment type to upload a file for students to annotate and submit directly in Canvas.
2. Roster Automatically Synced with Microsoft Teams
   This change allows data from the Canvas course People page to be synced to Microsoft Teams.
3. Reusable Comment Library in SpeedGrader
   This change allows graders to save frequently used comments in SpeedGrader and be reused across multiple students and assignments.
4. Directly Submit Assignment Photo using Webcam
   This change allows students to use their webcam to submit a file upload assignment from the browser and aligns behavior with the Canvas Student app.
5. Submission Re-Assignment
   In SpeedGrader, instructors can reassign an assignment with a due date to an individual student and ask them to redo their submission.
6. MathJax Equations & Text Field LaTeX Characters
   LaTeX equations can be entered in any Canvas text field, and MathJax is loaded if Canvas detects an equation image added by delimited LaTeX characters.
7. Pretty HTML Editor
   The Rich Content Editor includes a pretty HTML editor in addition to the raw HTML editor.
8. Improved Course and User Analytics
   Allows instructors to track average course grades for student submissions, page views, and participation metrics using an interactive chart graph or table.

If you have any questions about these, please reach out to the ATC Canvas Gurus at canvashelp@wpi.edu and we’re happy to help.