Canvas’ updates for October 28, 2017 include duplication of discussions and a change to the default Home Page.

Discussion Duplication

Discussions can be duplicated in the Discussions page or the Assignments page. The duplication option is located in the Settings menu for every available discussion. When a discussion is copied, the word Copy is added to the end of the discussion name.

All items in the discussion are duplicated including the name, description, and options. The person who copied the discussion is shown as the author of the discussion and is immediately subscribed to the discussion, and the date the discussion was copied displays as the last posted date.

In graded discussions, duplication exceptions include the following situations:

• Copied peer review discussions retain the peer review setting and Assign Review date, but the number of reviews per user will be set to zero.
• Copied discussions are always assigned to everyone in the course; differentiated discussions are not retained for individual users, groups, or sections.

Default Home Page is Modules

All new courses for Spring 2018 will open to the default Home Page of Modules.  This is great if you use Modules as the primary means of delivering content in your Canvas course.  If not, you can still change the Home Page of your course to be a Page, the Syllabus, or Assignments.  More information about using Modules may be found in the Canvas Guide to Modules.

To change your Home Page click on Home from the course menu.  In the right menu, underneath the Publish button, click on Choose Home Page.

For the complete list of updates visit the Canvas Production Release Notes page.