Final Canvas update

Canvas says all of the lingering issues with today’s Amazon Web Services outage have been fixed. The system should be running fine.

 

Scott

Canvas update

Canvas is back up, though Canvas says “there may still be areas of impaired functionality as we work through remaining issues.” If you have followed the news today, you probably read that Amazon Web Services had an outage that affected major sites such as Netflix and Expedia. Canvas and many, many other companies utilize Amazon Web Services.

 

Again, here’s the link to the Canvas status page: http://status.instructure.com

 

Scott

Canvas slowness

Canvas instructors,

 

If you haven’t already noticed, Canvas is experiencing some issues right now. I’ll let you know when it’s fixed. You can keep up with the status of the system at http://status.instructure.com/.

 

Scott

Canvas Student Context Cards

Canvas instructors,

 

There’s a new feature in Canvas called Student Context Cards, which allow instructors to view a summary of the student's progress in the course. This is particularly helpful for those of you teaching online and hybrid courses. From Canvas: “The context is generated from grades in the Gradebook and standard page view and participation activity in course analytics. Mobile data is not included unless a user accesses Canvas directly through a mobile browser, or if a user accesses content within the mobile app that redirects to a mobile browser.”

 

Learn more about Student Context Cards.

 

Scott

 

Attendance Roll Call in Canvas

Canvas instructors,

A couple of you have asked about having the ability to take attendance in Canvas. There is now an app called Attendance Roll Call that Canvas recently installed. You can enable it by going to Settings – Navigation and dragging Attendance from the hidden table below to the table above to activate it.

You might have seen it already in the course menu this week, then noticed that it disappeared. This is because Canvas mistakenly installed it the activated state before correcting this.

Anyway, you can learn more about the Attendance Roll Call app—and anything else in Canvas—by clicking the Help link in the global navigation menu and choosing Search the Canvas Guides.

Scott

Naming sections in Canvas

For those of you who teach Canvas courses that include merged sections, you might have noticed that your sections are named identically when you go to the Gradebook and click the drop-down for Showing All Sections. To name your sections individually, go to Settings – Sections – click a section – Edit Section – type in a section for Section Name – Update Section. Do not touch the text for SIS ID; this will cause damage to your course. Repeat the process for the next section. Choosing a section in your Gradebook allows you to see only students in a specific section.

 

The above has been placed on the Canvas faculty notes and tips page.

 

Scott

Canvas dropped students fix

Canvas instructors,

 

The issue was some dropped students remaining active in classes has apparently been fixed by District ITS. If you happen to notice any still active, send me the CRN of the class, the student’s name, and the student’s W number.

 

Scott