In our most recent announcements, we announced new items and updates impacting Rowan courses for the new academic year. Those items included new tools such as the Extend Student Access in the Rowan Online Portal and the UDOIT accessibility tool. In addition, updates to Canvas tools, enforced by Instructure, included changes to the Assign-to Functionality and updates made to Discussions and Announcements. You may view that previous post on the Rowan Online Blog.
Discussions Updates
The new interface updates for Canvas’s Discussions and Announcements were updated in May of this year with rolling updates being pushed out on a continuous basis. Recent updates as of mid August included the Disallow Threaded Replies option in Discussions. On Monday, September 16, 2024, Canvas will release a temporary button at the top of the Discussions index page to address the issues enforced during the Discussion Redesign.
Rowan Online is aware of the confusion this may cause for our users and is actively working to help instructors navigate and make use of the updates and solutions. This temporary function will be visible only in courses affected by the update. Many of our courses are not affected by the issue. Some instructors may not see this screen/button at the top of the index page.
If the temporary function is enabled, it will bulk update all Discussion Topics in the course to allow threaded replies. Threaded replies allow students to reply to both the Discussion Topic and other students’ replies within the topic. Once enabled the function/button will disappear and the notification will longer be visible in the course.
If an instructor would like to change Discussion Topics back, to allow students to reply only to the Discussion Topic, the change will need to occur manually on the individual settings for each Discussion Topic.
If you have any questions or require assistance, contact the Technology Support Center at 856-256-4400, or submit a ticket in the Rowan Support Portal.