Zoom updates for teaching & learning 

• New features and enhancements:
  • Improved and expanded emoji support in in-meeting chat.
  • Hosts can save the customized gallery view order for subsequent meetings. The order is saved to each unique meeting ID, so hosts can avoid manually changing the order for each meeting.
  • Schedule a meeting with Focus mode on when the meeting begins, to provide fewer distractions to all meeting participants.
• Zoom has a new Learning Center, a free and accessible platform on how to Zoom. It includes a library of short, self-paced, on-demand courses as well as live training sessions.
• Selected items from the Zoom roadmap for 2022:
  • Huddle view will be a visual representation of a channel, giving teams a sense of togetherness while on Zoom.
  • The Zoom Widget will provide an at-a-glance view of your meeting schedule, the ability to see who is already in a meeting, and more.

Scheduled maintenance planned for January 6

An update that fixes several data corruption bugs is scheduled for January 6. Users may be unable to access Canvas for up to 1 minute while the event is underway.
 

To be released January 15

• When a grade is entered manually for a missing or late submission, the Missing status is removed. Removing the entered grade does not replace the Missing label. Labels that need to be reapplied must be done manually. This behavior also applies in SpeedGrader.
• When a grader creates a text, media, or audio comment and tries to advance to the next student or a previous student for the assignment, the grader is notified that the comment has been created but not posted. 
• Canvas admins have the option to allow the Gradebook to display split student name columns in Account Settings. This change allows student first and last names to be displayed and exported in separate columns.
• The LTI - add / edit / delete permission has been grouped into three separate permissions. This change provides more granularity for managing External Tools (LTI).
• In New Quizzes, Matching questions include the option to select partial credit, similar to the Multiple Answer questions. Partial credit is the default option for this question type.
   

Accessibility update 

To improve accessibility, we updated the default link color in the Canvas Global Theme to a color with slightly more contrast: #027AC0. In addition, Canvas has announced they are updating the default Canvas theme to have better contrast. We encourage all schools to update any custom themes to have a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 by default. A suggested tool to use is the WebAIM Contrast Checker.
 

Classic Quizzes deprecation

Instructure plans to replace Classic Quizzes with New Quizzes. We will continue to highlight updates in this newsletter as the transition progresses. 

• Please review the detailed migration instructions in the beta release notes, in particular how question banks and multiple migrations are handled.
• We have enabled the option to choose New Quizzes Migration during Course Import/Copy.
• Currently three question types may require an adjustment after migration. Additional work is underway to fully support these quiz content types.

To be released January 9 

• Video reference copies that refer back to an original Panopto video, but with a completely clean slate of viewer-contributed metadata (e.g. quiz results, comments, and notes), will not be included in an organization's stored and/or usage hours.
  • It will be clearer to tell which videos in a library are reference copies and whether a video has reference copies attached to it.
  • Edits made to the original video will be reflected in its copies.
• To improve accessibility, Panopto’s viewer interfaces will automatically pause and read audio descriptions aloud, using machine speech synthesis. More information about how to Add Audio Descriptions.
• All users will receive a daily digest email of discussion comments and replies for their videos and comment threads by default. Users can opt-out of this feature or choose to receive a daily digest or a notification about each comment. 
• Panopto’s mobile app now meets WCAG Level A accessibility requirements, on both Android and iOS.
   

In beta on January 9 

Panopto Remote Recorders now feature improved monitoring capabilities, including stereo audio histograms and live audio monitoring. Remote Recorder administrators will be able to instantly listen to a live audio feed of any remote recorder, accessible via the Panopto web interface. 

• Learn about new features right in Slack. Click the new question mark icon in the app to access the highlights.
• Google Chrome and now Firefox are the browsers that support huddles.
• Create messages with numbered or bulleted lists within blockquote text formatting.
• Coming soon: reactions will be added to huddles so you can use emoji without interrupting the conversation.