Prepare to submit final grades for fall 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 (December 10, 2–3p.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
Honorlock available in Canvas for online exam proctoring
After a rigorous Request for Proposal (RFP) process, the University of Minnesota has selected Honorlock for our new online exam proctoring solution. Honorlock enhances academic integrity in online courses and assessments through its secure online proctoring tool. The academic technology community is testing the tool over the remaining weeks of the semester in order to better assist instructors' use of the tool. Our previous remote proctoring solution, Proctorio, will be phased out by May 31, 2025. More communications to Proctorio users on how to transition to Honorlock for spring 2025 courses is coming soon. See the Honorlock Technology Page for more information on this new tool.
DesignPLUS new sidebar implementation timeline
DesignPLUS has updated its tool bar in Canvas with a new user interface and design application. This sidebar helps you create and style engaging, organized, and polished content. Content using the Design Tools legacy sidebar will need to be upgraded as soon as you begin using the new sidebar. The DesignPLUS user group has assembled some important information about transitioning your content to the new sidebar. Here is the transition timeline for UMN users to the new sidebar:
- Presently: Users can opt to try the new sidebar when launching DesignPLUS; the legacy sidebar appears by default.
- January 3, 2025: The new sidebar will appear by default when DesignPLUS is launched in Canvas.
- May 2025: The legacy sidebar will be disabled.
- Dec 31, 2025: The vendor ends support of the legacy sidebar; pages may render incorrectly.
FeedbackFruits Updates
FeedbackFruits offers real-time AI feedback coaching
FeedbackFruits’ Acai Feedback Coach now provides AI-generated tips to students in real time as they enter peer feedback. Using instructor-set guidance, the Feedback Coach suggests ways for students to enhance the quality of the feedback they provide, making it more effective and constructive. This real-time support aligns with other generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini. To use Acai’s Discussion Coach, an instructor can enable it in the Discussion step in a Discussion on Topic assignment. Select theGuiding students setting, and then select the Feedback Coach toggle.
Another AI-powered tool, Acai Writing Coach 2.0 (beta), enables students to receive AI-generated feedback on their own writing. This feedback encourages students to reflect and refine their work before submitting it, helping them develop stronger writing skills. For more information or to explore using these FeedbackFruits tools, contact [email protected].
Zoom Updates
Check out the Zoom Music App
Zoom Music is available to all users. This feature allows you to play royalty free music in your Zoom meeting for you and all of your participants to hear. This tool may be helpful for those teaching online via Zoom and would like to have some music playing for students as they enter your Zoom classroom to avoid long, awkward silence as everyone gets settled. You can find it in the Apps menu of a Zoom meeting. Read Zoom’s Using the Music App for additional information.
GenAI Explorations: Conversation with Dan Emery
This fall, Extra Points is featuring a series of conversations focused on how faculty and staff around the University of Minnesota are using Generative AI to do University work. We recently interviewed Dan Emery, Assistant Director of Writing Across the Curriculum. Dan explains that a significant challenge we face is understanding that AIs generate text differently than humans do, and that text generated without thinking and knowing is new in our experience. Read about his insights in the Extra Points post.
Session recap on Microsoft Copilot and Zoom AI companion
In September, ATSS consultants presented an overview of the two AI tools, Microsoft Copilot and Zoom AI Companion, which are available to all UMN faculty, staff, and students. Read the main takeaways and explored use cases in Extra Points, Explore Generative AI tools: Microsoft Copilot and Zoom AI Companion - September 2024 session recap.
Register for a hands-on workshop with alternative text (alt. text)
Join the Accessibility Ambassadors on Thursday, December 12 from noon-1 p.m. for a workshop of writing alt text. Registration for this session is required. Presenters Madeleine Rothberg and Claire Houston from the WGBH National Center for Accessible Media will lead a hands-on session about alternative text. They’ll provide an opportunity for attendees to practice describing complex or nuanced images with discussion and feedback. You can also submit any images you would like to share with the group using the Alternative Text Images Google Form.
Spotlight
Boost Your Canvas Course Site Accessibility by Removing Outdated Content
To meet the standards for accessible course materials outlined by the Department of Justice in their clarifications on Title II of the ADA, all content in student-facing course sites must be accessible. This includes both content published for student viewing or content that remains hidden from students.
An important first step in making your course site accessible to students is to remove any old or outdated content. This step will save you time and effort updating, fixing, or revising unused content to make it accessible. Take time now to remove course content before copying any courses for the next semester. This includes removing any pages, documents, files, and media that are old, outdated, and no longer in use.
Another way to mass remove outdated content is to move only relevant or published content forward to the next semester course site by importing specific content from one Canvas course site to another. This option allows you to select only the content you will use and leave any old content behind. Watch this video demonstrating how to import all or specific content (4:49).
Some of that old content may be easy to part with, but you may want to save other material just in case you plan to use them again some semester. Here are two options for archiving or backing up content:
- Download Canvas course materials to your computer. You can export a Canvas course to create a copy as a backup on your local computer. You can import an export file into Canvas at any time.
- Create a development Canvas course site where you can store old content.
Important: You will need to review and revise any archived content to be accessible before importing it back into a student-facing course site. If you do accidentally delete something, there are ways to undelete and restore Canvas content.
As you finish up this fall semester and transition your course sites to the next semester, take time to delete old, outdated, and unused materials. Taking the time to do this work now will save your future self time and energy in meeting the April 2026 deadline of having all course materials accessible.