If you’ve been offline since May, a few things have shifted in learning technologies. We’re cutting straight through the release notes to highlight what actually impacts your teaching and student experience this fall. Canvas Instructure's Security Incident Instructure, the makers of Canvas, suffered a major security incident at a critical time at the end of spring term. The vendor continues to fortify their systems and provide regular updates . Take precautions against falling for a phishing attempt .  Enhanced Rubrics Enhanced Rubrics is now enabled across the entire institution. The new layout is intuitive, clean, and a welcome improvement over the old view. Read Canvas Enhanced Rubrics feature review in Extra Points . Assignment Enhancements Students get a streamlined, modernized view when submitting assignments. The interface upgrades how students view, submit, and track assignments. Compare a screenshot of the legacy student-facing assignment submission page vs a screenshot ...

Canvas Peer Review Enhancements is an updated suite of features designed to turn peer feedback into an active, dynamic, and fully integrated experience for all. Utilizing peer feedback is an effective way to deepen learning and drive engagement, but managing the logistics inside Canvas can quickly become overwhelming. While the original peer review tool in Canvas did provide a way for students to evaluate each other's work, it relied on manual pairing and was mostly disconnected from Canvas’s broader workflow, which added to the administrative burden on instructors. What Are Canvas Peer Review Enhancements? Canvas Peer Review Enhancements elevate peer feedback from a simple assignment setting into an independent workflow across your course. Previously, peer reviews were tied directly to the main assignment's framework and shared the same due dates and point values. With this update, peer review activities act as single items across Assignments, Modules, the student To-Do list, ...

Designing assignments for the GenAI era cannot be done in isolation. To tackle this challenge, Academic Technology Support Services (ATSS), the Center for Educational Innovation (CEI), and Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) recently hosted a full-day, in-person Assignment (re)Design Lab. The event brought together 24 attendees from three UMN campuses, sparking lively, cross-disciplinary strategy sessions among instructors, student guests, and table facilitators. The lab provided instructors with the structured time needed to design new assignments or overhaul existing ones with GenAI in mind. Since teaching goals vary, the workshop supported a full spectrum of approaches, from intentionally integrating GenAI into coursework to limiting its use to safeguard foundational learning. What Made the Lab Value-Driven? Post-event feedback highlighted exactly what made the experience so impactful for faculty: Dedicated Time & Collaboration: Instructors rarely get an uninterrupted day to foc...

Designing meaningful learning experiences in Canvas goes beyond simply delivering content and assigning work. If you are looking for ways to help students think about their learning, demonstrate and organize their growth throughout their academic career, and make connections across their work, Canvas Portfolio is a new solution that brings those goals into everyday teaching and learning.  While the original Canvas ePortfolio tool provided a way to showcase student work, Canvas Portfolio now shifts that experience into an ongoing, interactive process that develops collaboratively alongside a student’s academic path, rather than only at the end. What Is Canvas Portfolio? Canvas Portfolio is a built-in tool that enables students to create a digital collection of their work. It allows students to compile, organize, and reflect on their learning as they progress through their studies. Instead of assembling content after the fact, students can pull in assignments directly from their cour...

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...

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 ...