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It’s almost commencement graduation 2021--congratulations to the graduates and to you for all you’ve done this year to support the University! We are chugging along with new features to highlight in almost every one of our services, and a whole host of events coming your way. By our next update we will be preparing for summer, so enjoy spring and the lead up to graduation in the meantime!
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Teaching and Learning Remotely
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Zoom updates for teaching & learning 
- School liaisons have a special role that allows them to get support from Zoom. If liaisons at your school change, submit a ticket to HUIT Collaboration Services to ensure the correct access for your team.
- New & enhanced features:
 Immersive View allows hosts to place participants onto a single virtual background and adjust their arrangement. Zoom provides some backgrounds and hosts can upload their own. Version 5.6.3 or higher required.- Vanishing Pen, a new annotation tool, allows presenters to mark on the shared screen to highlight certain information, and then the markings fade away within a couple of seconds. This results in easier highlighting so users don’t have to undo or erase annotations.
- Any emoji available for Zoom chat can now be used as a reaction in a meeting. Hosts can also restrict reactions to the standard set, or allow use of the full emoji suite. Version 5.2.0 or higher required.
- When screen sharing and allowing Zoom windows to be seen during the share, Zoom windows can now be minimized.
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In production 
- In New Quizzes, the Multiple Attempts menu includes an option to keep the first score for grading when multiple submission attempts are allowed. This change allows instructors to permit students to retake a quiz but retain the first attempt score for grading.
To be released 5/15
- Instructors can create an annotated assignment type by uploading a file for students to annotate and submit in Canvas. Students can use the annotation tools with DocViewer to complete the assignment. Note: annotation assignments cannot be used for group assignments.
- Users can update their User Settings to enable Auto-Show Closed Captioning for captions added to recorded Canvas videos or uploaded videos in a course. Videos embedded from third-party tools like Panopto are not supported.
- An account admin can designate a course as a template for all new courses created in an account. This feature will be available in the ExEd Canvas instance. It will be turned off initially in the residential Canvas instance to avoid conflicts with the Site Creator tool that already provides a course template feature.
Security updates
“Act as a user” 
The new Masquerade Tool allows admins to temporarily assume a role that grants them access to act as a user for 60 minutes at a time. The tool is currently available and will be enforced on May 17th for all subaccounts.
Two-factor authentication
As mentioned in previous updates, two-factor authentication (2FA) is available for all users in the ExEd instance. An excellent way to ensure that your account remains secure, 2FA is already required for many Harvard applications. Advancing our mission to improve the security of our platforms, we ask that ExEd Canvas admins who have not already done so enable 2FA following these instructions.
Diversity, inclusion, and belonging feature updates
- This spring, users will be able to identify, change, or delete personal pronouns displayed in Canvas. The pronoun feature currently provides a list to choose from, and Harvard’s Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging provided guidance on the options that will be present. That office -- along with Academic Technology -- recognize that language is evolving and members of our community should be able to be called and describe their identity however they choose. We continue to advocate for Instructure to make the feature more flexible. Provide feedback or learn more about gender, identity, or pronouns.
- Name pronunciation playback is coming to your Canvas site. The audio recordings created in my.harvard and Peoplesoft will be available in Canvas so that students and instructors will be able to hear correct pronunciations. Contact your school’s Registrar's Office for more information on where the recordings are made, and we’ll let you know as soon as the LTI tool is available to add to Canvas sites.
Microsoft integrations coming soon
In October 2020, Instructure and Microsoft announced that they would be building on their partnership. In addition to the currently available integration of Microsoft Immersive Reader, they recently shared plans to release deeper integrations with Microsoft Teams and OneDrive in August. Here is the outline of the features and timeline for the roll-out.
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 Nested folders, a long-awaited feature request, will be released in June! Users will be able to categorize their activities into Folders, with multiple folder levels. Users can drag and drop an activity into a folder or use the Move action for several activities at once. When sharing a folder with a Team, all the activities and folders in it will be shared as well. The release will also have the following impact:
- Groups of activities will no longer be able to be converted into surveys.
- The Search feature will be disabled until future development.
- The "Copy visual settings" action will be disabled until future development.
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- The new Survey Builder is now enabled by default for all users, with the choice to opt-out. Beginning May 12, logged in users will see a notification stating that the new Survey Builder will be enabled permanently at the end of May. On May 26 all users will be permanently migrated to the new Survey Builder.
- A new resource page guides users to the proper avenue to get Qualtrics support. This is currently a stand-alone resource not connected to the Qualtrics support center or help menu. Feel free to add it to your Qualtrics support documentation.
- Coming later this spring/early summer:
- Embedded data enhancement to allow special characters
- New Question Library
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Join Instructure to discuss how colleges and universities adapted to the challenges of the last year, what was learned, and how to continue improving the quality of digital learning. Colleagues from Ithaca, Fairfield, Framingham, Northeastern, NYIT, and the Online Learning Consortium will share their experiences around planning and implementing equity-based digital learning environments.
Register for or share Zoom’s webinars to learn more about creating high-quality online experiences. Selected offerings:
This session showcases recent work from our developer community. HUIT Academic Technology as well as school partners at FAS and DCE will share recent projects.
Drop in for advice on software development or to ask questions about any of Academic Technology's services.
- 5/7 at 2-3pm
- 5/21 at 2-3pm
If you’re using Poll Everywhere with a group of presenters, join this webinar to learn how to leverage Poll Everywhere’s powerful collaboration, reporting, and engagement tools.
Hear what’s new and coming soon in Canvas, watch uplifting talks about the whole wide world of education, and share ideas for teaching and learning with technology.
Geared towards higher ed teaching and learning professionals, this event explores key issues, engages technology and service providers, and fosters knowledge sharing across institutions.. Join for sessions such as: Designing Post-Pandemic Learning Spaces, and Scaling HyFlex for the Post-COVID Campus.
This session covers how focusing on the student experience has helped improve student access and success. Speakers include Christopher Jackson, Nataly Kogan, Jeff Selingo, a head of marketing from Purdue University, and the President of Odessa College.
Hosted by the Data Justice Lab at the UK’s Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Culture (JOMEC), this conference will bring together international scholars, practitioners, activists, and community groups to discuss the possibilities and challenges of civic participation in a datafied society.
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—The HUIT Academic Technology Team
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