Looking for MediaAmp, Course Links, or Files in Canvas's "Enhanced" Rich Content Editor (RCE)?

Recently, my university has changed things so that faculty using Canvas LMS will now encounter the “Enhanced Rich Content Editor (RCE)” by default whenever they edit an assignment, announcement, etc. Strangely, this change was made in the middle of the semester, not giving faculty who were unfamiliar with the "Enhanced" RCE a chance to find everything they frequently used in the classical editor. So here's a list of tips (with screenshots) to help you get used to the new editor.

• ASU uses MediaAmp to host videos for streaming to students. If you’re looking for MediaAmp (to embed videos) in the new RCE, you have to click on the little “Plug-in” icon (looks like a plug) and possibly search for it under “View All.” 
  
  
• If you’re looking for course links (Pages, Assignments, etc.), you have to click on the “Link” Icon (looks like chain links) and then select “Course Links."
  

  
  
• If you’re looking for your Files, you have to click on the “Link” icon, then select “Course Links”, then in the pop-up “Add” window that comes up on the right, change “Course Links” to “Files."
  

  

  
  
  
• Alternatively, some of you might not see the wisdom of changing editors in the middle of a semester like this one. For those of you, you can go to “Settings” and “Feature Options” and then toggle “RCE Enhancements” OFF to get the old editor back (at least for a little while).
  

  

I hope that's helpful! I wish I could say that the Enhanced RCE is an improvement, but I think you can see how it adds so many extra steps to find things that used to be up front and ready to use in the old editor. Even though it looks a little nicer, it's a net downgrade from the old editor.  And it is still impossible to drag images into the editor to insert them or simply paste them in place. You get no functional benefits out of the editor, and you get a lot of extra drag.

Happy editing, faculty!

Seeing All Canvas LMS Submission Comments in One Place

I hate submission comments in Canvas LMS. Students are given the impression that these are nice ways to send questions or comments to the instructor, but they are too easy to overlook. For example, the Canvas Teacher mobile app will send a notification whenever a student leaves a submission comment, but the notification text is often truncated and so it is impossible to see which assignment was commented on (even if the student commenting is clear). Furthermore, if you activate the notification, Canvas Teacher brings you to the dashboard as opposed to the comment itself and the notification is lost forever.

Today I discovered that in the "Inbox", which otherwise is for Canvas e-mails, there is the additional functionality to see ALL SUBMISSION COMMENTS across ALL COURSES in one place! Simply click on the "Inbox" and then go to the drop down box in the top left and select "Submission Comments" (as shown below). You can then review all recent submission comments and reply to them without even revisiting the assignment.

So now when I get a notification about a submission comment, I go directly to the Inbox rather than trying to hunt through all assignments (and eventually giving up).

 

CS Education: C# in Mono / Java

At least three times this year, I have found myself suggesting that perhaps it would be better to teach component-based software enginereing to young undergraduates using C# (via Mono, of course) as opposed to the more-restrictive Java. I feel a little like Nixon going to China when I say this...

Having said that, it's probably better to use Java for production code. But I almost think that you need flexibility to experiment at the educational level, and Java has no flexibility (because it is so tightly crafted for security, portability, and stability). C++ has a lot of flexibility, but no one wants students learning C++ anymore (a comment on that in a bit). C# (under Mono, of course) has more flexibility than Java but less than C++. It's relevant, as it is relatively easy to move from C# development to Java develpoment (and there are plenty of companies (or at lest one gigantic one) that are looking for C# developers too). It has preprocessor directives (even though it has no preprocessor), which gives it a customizable presentation for the classroom environment. So it feels like it would be easier to start with C# and then "graduate" to Java (and go to graduate school for Lisp? I dunno. And where does Python fit in? Maybe it takes the place of Logo in 4th grade).

Regarding the note above about no one wanting students to learn C++ anymore, it is interesting that software interviewers are typically of the age and rank where most of their experience is in C or C++. I was at an interview recently where the interviewer asked questions contrasting addressing individual bytes of a 4-byte unsigned integer using pointers or bitmasks; such a question does not belong in any discussion of Java. Moreover, I heard someone in a nearby cubicle on a phone interview being asked about static variables in C and C++ programs. The graduate student was more familiar with "static" in the context of Java, and so I think he worked htings out sufficiently well, but most students have never heard of this term (likewise, they don't even think to look up "persistent" in their MATLAB documentation). So it seems unfair that undergraduates are being switched over to Java... and will be asked about pointers in some of their first technical interviews. Oh well...