As generative AI tools become ubiquitous in higher education, instructors across disciplines are grappling with a core challenge:  How do we authentically capture student learning when an AI can generate a polished essay, summary, or response to prompts in seconds? While detector tools often prove unreliable or punitive, pedagogical redesign offers a far more sustainable solution. Rather than focusing solely on detecting AI usage at the point of submission, AI-resilient course design focuses on making the learning process visible, collaborative, and reflective. FeedbackFruits offers a suite of learning tools integrated directly into Canvas that helps shift the focus from final product to active engagement. Read on to learn how you can use FeedbackFruits to build assignments that foster genuine student learning in the age of AI. What Makes a Learning Activity "AI-Resilient"? AI-resilient learning activities tend to share three core characteristics: Assignments that focus...

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 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...

In this blog post, Katy Guthrie , Teaching Assistant Professor in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Sciences (CFANS), shares her insights on using FeedbackFruits Peer Review to enhance student engagement and learning. Her experience provides valuable perspectives for other educators looking to enrich their teaching practices with technology-driven solutions. FeedbackFruits (FbF) offers a suite of academic technology tools that supports a variety of peer learning activities. The University is currently licensing four FbF tools , integrated in Canvas, that support self-assessment, peer review, and group member evaluation. Peer Learning Strategies: Efficient and effective Professor Guthrie is a strong advocate for teaching students how to provide constructive feedback on their peers' writing. FbF makes it seamless for her to integrate peer feedback activities into her classes. She particularly values the FbF Peer Review tool in her writing-intensive courses, where stude...

Are you struggling to keep pace with artificial intelligence (AI) and its rapid pace of change? At Academic Technology Support Services, we were too, so we created this post to make sense of the AI tool categories and how they can support the teaching process. In the post, we compare various AI tools and delve a little deeper into the category of AI Agents or Assistants. Due to the rapid pace of AI functional development, combined with the proliferation of terms, definitions, and tools, this blog post has a significant caveat: This is our attempt to start/continue making sense of what’s new and upcoming in the use of AI; we aren’t looking for a right or wrong way to use an AI platform, or to accurately define groups of AI tools, but instead gain an understanding of how the various factors interact. Whether you agree with our characterizations or not, join the AI iCoP discussions and let us know your thoughts. After our AI review, we will apply AI concepts and tools to an example from ...

Academic Technology Support Services (ATSS) partnered with Instructure , the parent company of Canvas, to conduct a usability study on some of Instructure’s most recent updates to the Canvas Discussion tool. The study aimed to understand user experiences to implement changes and/or improve training.  Usability partnership & study process Since 2015, the University of Minnesota academic technology teams have conducted usability studies to understand how instructors and students use different learning technologies. This work is carried out with internal and external stakeholders such as University of Minnesota academic technology leadership, the academic technology community , and our learning technology vendors. For this study, the Canvas Discussions tool was selected for two reasons: Instructure was redesigning the tool, and it’s used in approximately 25% of University of Minnesota academic courses as shown in the graph below. Discussions are heavily used in those courses: as o...

This post summarizes the August 2024 Use FeedbackFruits Tools for Peer Learning: Basics session facilitated by ATSS . During the session, ATSS consultants presented an overview of the four FeedbackFruits peer learning tools and explored how to create a FeedbackFruits assignment in Canvas. Session participants completed a FeedbackFruits assignment as a student. Key Takeaways Introduction to FeedbackFruits The University of Minnesota is in year three of its license with FeedbackFruits. While UMN licenses four of FeedbackFruits tools , our session focused on the two tools that most directly support peer learning:  Group Member Evaluation Peer Review Set up and use FeedbackFruits in Canvas Because FeedbackFruits is integrated into Canvas, some considerations should be kept in mind so that students are not confused by the information they see in Canvas compared to what they see in FeedbackFruits. A few important notes about FeedbackFruits assignments: You will start by creating a Canvas...

This post summarizes the August 2024 Canvas Gradebook Set-up session facilitated by Academic Technology Support Services (ATSS). During the session, ATSS consultants presented an overview of getting started with the Canvas Gradebook and its settings, discussed streamlining grading throughout the semester, and shared resources for advanced tips and tricks. Key Takeaways The role of the Canvas Gradebook in addressing access and inclusion Challenges facing students: academic stress, student mental health, transparency, anxiety about grades and class performance Challenges facing instructors: burnout, grading and time commitments, transparency in grading practices and assessments, ungrading We do not intend to imply that simply using the Canvas Gradebook will single-handedly eliminate the previously mentioned issues. However, we bring them to think about a small change that could be taken to set yourself and your students up for a semester with more ease.  Canvas Gradebook settings A...