Weekly Quercus Updates

In this Weekly Update:

1. Canvas Deploy Notes
2. This Week's Faculty Question

Canvas Deploy Notes

The latest Canvas Deploy Notes released on April 28th. Here are some of the updates in this deploy.

New Quizzes

The New Quiz creation page will now have both a Save and Build button.

The Build button launches the New Quiz editor, while the Save button saves the current page and returns to where quiz was accessed from (i.e., the Quizzes index page).Please note that we still recommend using classic quizzes for assignments and final assessments.

Rich Content Editor (RCE) Course Navigation Home Link

In Course Links, the Course Navigation section includes the Home link that allows instructors to add a link to the Home page anywhere the RCE is supported.

Speedgrader and Missing submissions

Speedgrader now displays the Missing label on assignments with no submission without requiring that the assignment be graded first.  

This Week's Faculty Question

Q: One of my students sent me a message via the Quercus Inbox and I replied to the message directly from the notification I received in my U of T email account. In my reply, I attached a file. The student says they can see my reply in the Quercus Inbox, but they cannot see the attachment. Am I doing something wrong?

A: Unfortunately, this is a current limitation with how messages are passed from the Quercus/Canvas Inbox to external email account (like your U of T email). If someone sends you a message from the Quercus Inbox, a copy of the message is sent to your U of T (or personal) email, depending on how you have set your notification preferences in Quercus. You can then reply directly to this copy, and the reply is sent to that person’s Inbox, with a copy forwarded to their U of T or personal email as well (again, this depends on their notification preferences).  

However, there is an issue with this process when you reply to an Inbox message directly from an external email account and your attach a file to your message. In this situation, the recipient will still see your message, but they will not receive the attached file. The screenshot below shows the message that accompanies the copy of an Inbox message received in a personal email:

Suggested workarounds to this issue:

• Only send and reply to messages from within the Quercus Inbox, not from copies of messages you receive in your U of T or personal email (treat these copies as read-only). Let your students know that they should also be using the Inbox this way too, to avoid situations where their attached files aren’t received.
• When communicating with the entire class, use Announcements instead of Inbox.

Have a Quercus (or EdTech) question? Please contact FASE's EdTech Office.