April 2026

Submit your fall semester course material orders

Course material order requests are due on Friday, May 1. To submit your fall course materials order(s), please fill out the Course Works Order and Request Form by May 1. For questions, email [email protected].

Prepare to submit final grades for spring semester

The end of the semester is coming up quickly! We have a couple of resources available for you to use when submitting your final grades:

Do it yourself

Use the self-help guide, Canvas: Prepare and Submit Grades to Faculty Center/PeopleSoft, as a checklist. The guide will walk you through how to prepare your final course grades in Canvas and send them to Faculty Center/PeopleSoft. 

Get hands-on support (April 30, 1-2 p.m.)

Join Academic Technology Support Services (ATSS) consultants and your peers for a hands-on, active work session to build and modify your Gradebook to prepare for submitting final grades. After a brief demonstration, questions and discussion topics of interest from participants will determine the focus of the session. Enroll in Canvas Gradebook: Prepare to submit final grades. 

Canvas updates 

New Quizzes survey option 

Canvas recently added a survey option to New Quizzes. Instructors can view a list of students who selected a specific answer. This survey can be either graded or ungraded. In anonymous surveys, participant names display as Student 1, Student 2, and so on. See how to create a survey using New Quizzes for more information.

Zoom updates

Here are a couple of new Zoom updates that will be rolling out this month: 

• You will have control over which browser tab you want to share. Until now, you’ve been limited to sharing your Browser showing all of your messy tabs. Now users can share just the tab they intend to show in the meeting. 
• Captions will have a three-minute window for scrollback. Users with automated captions enabled previously only had them appear for the 5-10 seconds they were up as immediate captions, but with Zoom’s newest update you can now scroll back 3 minutes and see all captions before it enters the transcript. 

Confirm all grades in the Canvas Gradebook are visible to students

Make sure you and your students are on the same page for knowing where their grade is in your course. This tip is for those instructors who change the grade posting policy to something other than the default, which comes in handy when grading large projects and papers that take a few weeks to complete. To quickly check that all grades are visible to students, follow these steps:

1. Select the gear icon in the top right corner of the Gradebook.
2. Select the View Options tab across the top of the menu.
3. Check the box for View hidden grades indicator.

When you scan the Gradebook, an orange dot will appear in the top left corner of the cell for any grade that is still hidden from students.

Analog inspiration cards drive rich discussion about AI in higher education

To help you navigate the overwhelming influx of information surrounding Generative AI in academia, consider checking out the 48 Analog Inspiration cards. These themed cards are designed to spark meaningful conversations about shared values, new learning activities, and enhanced educational outcomes. They assist instructors in framing, resisting, exploring, and centering the use of artificial intelligence within their course design and teaching practices. Instructors on the Duluth campus can reserve a deck of cards from the MediaHub Checkout. 

Example Cards:

• Critical Thinking: Pose a thought-provoking, open-ended question from your lesson. Give students a few minutes to write down their initial thoughts. Then, have them ask the same question to AI and compare their responses: What’s similar? What’s missing? Invite students to pair up and discuss their human and AI responses. Debrief as a class to highlight student insights and gaps in AI’s logic, reframing AI not as an answer machine but as a collaborator with ideas, insights, errors, and limitations.
• Discernment: "What am I trying to avoid by using AI right now?" Ask yourself this question, and encourage students to do the same.  Is it.... confusion? perfectionism? boredom? Do I really need to use AI right now? Encourage students to jot down these observations. Even a 30 second pause can lead to more intentional engagement with AI.
• Growth Mindset: After a quiz or assignment, ask students to choose one question or section they struggled with. Invite them to use AI to explore what they misunderstood and how to improve it. Students can then write a brief reflection and resubmit it along with the revised work for credit, normalizing the idea that mistakes, evaluation, and iteration are essential parts of learning.

Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) coming soon

Mark your calendars for Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) on May 21, 2026. This online event will get the accessibility community talking, thinking, and learning more about digital access and inclusion. 

This year’s keynote presenter is Dr. Shanna Kattari, associate professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Social Work. Dr. Kattari’s presentation titled "At the Intersection of Access and Justice" will explore how disability justice, rooted in Black, Brown, queer, and trans disabled leadership, pushes institutions beyond legal compliance to recognize disability as a cultural identity and justice movement, creating space where community values and federal mandates meet.

GAAD will also feature engaging sessions for people at all levels of accessibility awareness and skills. Check out the GAAD webpage for more information about the keynote and presentation tracks. Registration information will be available in April.

Canvas Gradebook: Prepare to submit final grades

April 30, 2026; 1–2 p.m.

Join consultants from Academic Technology Support Services and your peers for a hands-on workshop to prepare your Canvas Gradebook to submit final grades. Questions from participants and discussions will determine the focus of the session.

Check out more events across all TeachingSupport partners.