There are several updates to the Canvas learning management system, now available to the entire Pitt community.

Spring 2024 Updates

• The Discussions and Announcements Redesign is now active and enabled as the default experience. This refreshes how discussions look and feel, adds new visual features, adds the option for ungraded anonymous discussions and more. Learn the full details from a short demonstration course or watch a recording of the same.
• The Panopto integration with Canvas has been upgraded. In addition to improved security, you can now create an assignment that will be graded automatically according to the percentage of a video watched. The Panopto documentation has the full details.
  • Note: It takes approximately 3 hours for the grade to sync with Canvas after watching, and does not work properly if the assignment is set to restrict to one attempt.
• For students, offline support is now available on the mobile apps. This important tool will allow students to cache parts of Canvas for offline use while traveling or experiencing weak Internet connections. Learn more at the Canvas blog. (The equivalent desktop feature has been available for a couple of years.)
• A few of the smaller changes that are recent or coming very soon include:
  • Additional options for “Message Students Who.” (May 8)
  • Find and replace in the content editor.
  • More gradebook filtering choices.
  • Improved options to edit and update events in the Calendar.

About New Quizzes

New Quizzes development appears to be reaching a crescendo with updates too numerous to list (but importantly including report and item bank improvements). The Teaching Center will be holding training sessions for New Quizzes later this summer, so keep an eye on future newsletters to sign up for them!

New Quizzes remains opt-in at this time as it continues to undergo development, but will eventually become the default Canvas quiz experience.