by Information Technology Services
Updates to Canvas were released on Aug. 26. Canvas operates on a monthly release cycle, with features added or updated every three weeks.
To see all the new features and fixed bugs, view the complete August Release Notes. In addition to the Canvas release, Information Technology Services releases updates to services and integrations with K-State Online through the month as necessary.
The following updates have been made in K-State Online:
- DocViewer — Canvas DocViewer can be used in the student submission details page and SpeedGrader.
- Point and Area Annotation Comments — To save an annotation in DocViewer, Point and Area annotations do not require comments. Comments can be added to the annotation like all other annotation types.
- Session Expiration Warning — When a user creates annotations in DocViewer, Canvas will display a session-expiration warning at 9 hours 50 minutes, followed by 5-minute and 1-minute warnings until the 10-hour limit has been reached. This change helps remind users to save their work before the session automatically refreshes at 10 hours. A session can be restarted at any time by refreshing the submission page.
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Rich Content Editor — The Rich Content Menu toolbar includes an option to insert or edit media. This change allows users to easily add online media content to a course without having to use the HTML Editor.
- The General tab includes fields for the media source location and dimensions. The media can be resized and set to constrain size proportions.
- The Embed tab includes an HTML field for embedded code.
- The Advanced tab includes fields for providing alternative source URL(s) and poster image information. Alternative sources pointing to different video encodings can be specified to be used as a fallback if the browser doesn’t support the initial encoding offered. The poster URL source indicates the image that displays until the user clicks the play button. If the poster option is blank, the first frame of the source video will be used as the poster image.
Links from common providers (like YouTube and Vimeo) often link to custom media players, rather than directly to video files, and will not recognize any content added to the alternative source and posted image options.
