26.07.2018

By Canvas

Canvas by Instructure (NYSE: INST), the open online learning management system (LMS) that makes teaching and learning easier, announced several new tools and enhancements today at its annual edtech conference, InstructureCon. These new capabilities are designed to support education at scale, enhance the student experience, and further inform and empower educators and administrators.

"As the learning landscape evolves, Canvas continues to enhance our offerings and create new tools to make learning impactful for students, teachers and administrators," said Mitch Benson, senior vice president of product at Instructure. "These Canvas capabilities improve teaching and learning by making it easier to scale learning experiences and providing deeper insights that can help shape learning outcomes."

These new Canvas enhancements enable:

• GREATER FOCUS ON STUDENTS: Improving the student experience and meeting the demands of evolving learners will be an increased focus in the coming year. Key enhancements include streamlined To Do functionality in Student View, a more innovative mobile experience, and an increased focus on helping students achieve their outcomes.
• MORE POWER FOR ADMINISTRATORS: These enhancements include more granular permissions to help meet the complex demands of varying roles within an institution. They also support an expanded partner ecosystem through improvements to the Canvas API plus new integrations with market-leading SIS providers and a myriad of best-of-breed tools to streamline teaching and learning.
• SUPPORT FOR LARGE COURSES AND TEACHING AT SCALE: Expanded Gradebook functionality — combined with the ability to deliver more granular, section-specific announcements and discussions — will ease the burden of managing large class sizes. New functionality also supports institutions with rolling enrollment, and ensures fairness by facilitating anonymous and moderated grading. Empowering instructors with the data they need will continue our focus on actionable analytics to improve student success, while simplifying teachers daily activity.

Brand-new Canvas tools include:

• QUIZZES.NEXT: This new feature will replace Quizzes, laying the groundwork for streamlined future development and introducing a more intuitive and efficient user interface, greater stability and more question types. With Quizzes.Next, teachers and instructional designers can create and administer online assessments (e.g., quizzes, tests and exams). They can also conduct and moderate exams and assessments, both graded and ungraded.
• CANVAS ANALYTICS 2: With Analytics 2, teachers can rely on interactive, actionable and easy-to-use dashboards to answer the most common student performance and participation questions, providing information for proactive course correction. The feature saves teachers time by helping them quickly identify students who are struggling and identify patterns in student success that may be caused by the course itself, then use those insights to improve content or methodology.
• CANVAS DOCVIEWER: Built in-house to replace the Box previewer and Crocodoc annotation tools (and initially rolled out in 2017), Canvas DocViewer automatically converts common document types into web-viewable and interactive learning experiences. DocViewer supports a variety of document types that can be converted in Canvas, rendering them as PDFs in SpeedGrader where they can be easily annotated, streamlining the grading process for teachers. And with ongoing enhancements, DocViewer has surpassed the functionality of those legacy tools, empowering teachers like never before.

To learn more about Canvas, visit www.CanvasLMS.com.

ABOUT CANVAS
Through open, usable, cloud-based technologies, Canvas enables easy integration of the content, tools and services that teachers need and students want. As the most usable, customizable, adaptable and reliable learning platform (think 99.9% uptime), Canvas is adopted faster and deeper (or, is used in more ways by more users) than any other LMS. So, in the end, investing in 21st-century education technology actually makes teaching and learning easier (like it's supposed to). Learn more about Canvas at www.CanvasLMS.com.

ABOUT INSTRUCTURE
Instructure, Inc. is a leading software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology company that makes software that makes people smarter. With a vision to help maximize the potential of people through technology, Instructure created Canvas, Gauge, Arc and Bridge to enable organizations everywhere to easily develop, deliver and manage engaging face-to-face and online learning experiences. To date, Instructure has connected millions of instructors and learners at more than 3,000 educational institutions and corporations throughout the world. Learn more about Canvas for higher ed and K–12, and Bridge for the corporate market, at www.Instructure.com.