Providing meaningful feedback is a cornerstone of student success, and rubrics are essential tools for maintaining transparency and consistency in grading. On May 16, 2026, Canvas Enhanced Rubrics will be turned on in Canvas. This updated feature is designed to streamline how you build, manage, and use rubrics in your courses. In preparation for rolling out this updated feature, I (Rebecca George-Burrs, Academic Technologist in Academic Technology Support Services) spent some time building some new rubrics and managing my existing rubrics in the Enhanced Rubrics space. This blog post is my review of Enhanced Rubrics.  New Streamlining Features for Building Rubrics Building rubrics in Canvas has been known for being time-consuming and requiring persistence. Enhanced Rubrics brings a more intuitive user interface to build and revise rubrics along with flexible viewing and scoring options that make the grading process more efficient. Here is a list of updates that I was most pleased a...

When creating video content for your course, accessibility should remain a central consideration. Accurate captioning and appropriate audio description not only promote equitable access to course materials, but will also be required for compliance with the University’s updated digital accessibility policy beginning in April 2026. Proactively addressing caption quality now will help guarantee that your content remains accessible and meets policy guidelines. It is essential to order or edit captions for any video you require students to watch in your course. If you are linking to videos you do not own, take the time to carefully review the existing captions for accuracy, completeness, and timing. Auto-generated captions are often a starting point, not a finished product. If the captions are inaccurate and you are unable to contact the owner to correct them, the video should not be used in your course. Providing content that is inaccessible to some students creates unnecessary barriers ...

Extra Points contributors are interviewing University of Minnesota instructors working to comply with the updated digital accessibility policy effective April 2026. These blog posts highlight the approach they take as they lean into the challenge of revising their course content to be digitally accessible. This post highlights Dr. Vanessa Lee, Professor of Psychology in the College of College of Liberal Arts, Twin Cities Campus. Interviewer: When did you first start hearing about digital accessibility?   Vanessa Lee (VL): I think I first started hearing about digital accessibility in the spring of 2024. However, it wasn't until the summer of 2024 that the emails started coming in, urging me to really begin this work. Interviewer: What were your initial thoughts, feelings and concerns about the need to make your course materials accessible? VL: My first reaction was that this is a good and important thing to do for my students. I was already having to make various accommodatio...

Designing a personalized learning experience in Canvas often requires a careful balance between providing specialized support and maintaining a well-organized, manageable course structure. While Canvas Groups and Sections have their function for student organization, Differentiation Tags is a new tool to help you deliver targeted instruction with even greater precision and privacy. What Are Differentiation Tags? Differentiation Tags allow you to create custom labels and assign them to specific students or groups of students. Unlike Sections or Groups, these tags are completely invisible to students. This "behind-the-scenes" layer of organization allows you to categorize students based on specific needs, progress, required accommodations, or any needed way to sort students without creating public-facing labels. Once a student is tagged via the People page, the tags become a selectable option in the "Assign To" field. This means that you can deliver specific assignm...

  Extra Points contributors are interviewing University of Minnesota instructors working to comply with the updated digital accessibility policy effective April 2026. These blog posts highlight the approach they take as they lean into the challenge of revising their course content to be digitally accessible. This post highlights Dr. Olivia Crandell, Assistant Professor, Center for Learning Innovation, Rochester. Interviewer: When did you first start hearing about digital accessibility?  Dr. Olivia Crandell (OC): I think I first heard a general announcement in the fall of 2024, likely in a campus-wide email. However, I didn't give it serious attention until it was actually brought up in a department faculty meeting. It's been about a year since I have had digital accessibility seriously on my radar. Interviewer: What were your initial thoughts, feelings and concerns about the need to make your course materials accessible? My initial thought was that this would be a lot o...

 Hello readers, On behalf of the teams that contribute to the Extra Points blog, we want to extend a sincere thank you for being such an engaged community of readers. We directly support the University of Minnesota’s teaching mission, and this blog has been a terrific space to share information and highlight current topics. Our goal is to ensure the content we create is timely, relevant, and useful for your work. To do that effectively, we believe the most important voice in the room is yours. In this post, we are asking for your guidance: What do you want to learn about or discuss next? Your challenges, curiosities, and innovative ideas are the best source of inspiration for our future posts. Your feedback will directly help our teams plan and write articles that address the real-world needs of instructors and staff. What topics or formats would be most valuable to you? To get the conversation started, here are some of the types of articles we often write. Are there specific topic...