THIS IS NOT THE MOST RECENT OAT UPDATE
Issue Contents
Reminders
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Reminders
Turnitin Update Coming December 1
On December 1, OAT will enable an upgraded Turnitin experience in all Canvas courses. The new interface will only affect newly created Turnitin assignments. Existing assignments at the time of the update will not be affected.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is changing?
In technical terms, Turnitin's "standard assignment" in Canvas will be moving from the LTI 1.1 protocol to the more modern LTI 1.3 protocol. In addition to an updated look and feel, the LTI 1.3 method changes (and simplifies) the way Turnitin assignments are created.
In the updated method, instructors will create Turnitin assignments from the 'three-dot' menu of the main Assignments home page, as shown below.
Step 1: Click the 'three dot' menu on the Assignments home page of the course. It's no longer necessary to click "+ Assignment" to create full Turnitin assignments.
Step 2: Choose "Turnitin" from the Assignment menu.
From the Turnitin modal window that appears, instructors will configure the details of the assignment, such as point value, instructions, and due date. As with the current integration, instructors can configure any number of additional options about the student experience.
What are some benefits of the change to LTI 1.3?
- Simplified workflow to create a Turnitin assignment in Canvas
- Improved Feedback Studio grading and feedback tool for instructors
- Immediate course roster syncing in the inbox to see who has and has not submitted
- Ability to submit on behalf of a student if necessary
Watch a guided overview of the new Turnitin experience!
Note: the guided overview implies that instructors can import existing Canvas rubrics into Turnitin's Feedback Studio. This is not possible. See below regarding using Canvas rubrics.
What changes to existing workflows do instructors need to be aware of?
In Turnitin 1.3 assignments, student submissions will not show in Speedgrader. This means that instructors cannot use built-in Canvas rubrics to grade LTI 1.3 assignments. Nor can they use Speedgrader to provide feedback to submissions. In addition, a colored similarity score icon will not show in the Canvas gradebook for students or instructors. However, a submission indication will still be there.
Instead, all grading, rubrics, and feedback are expected to occur in the Feedback Studio interface of Turnitin. Scores will be passed back to the Canvas gradebook automatically and students will be able to review feedback from the assignment's link in Canvas. Other LTI 1.3 tools operate this way (e.g. VoiceThread), with grading done inside the tool rather than in Speedgrader.
How can instructors continue using Canvas rubrics and Speedgrader with Turnitin reports?
Instead of creating a Turnitin assignment, this can be done in a standard Canvas assignment by enabling Turnitin Plagiarism Review within the assignment settings. See "Enabling Basic Plagiarism Checking on a Canvas Assignment" for more information. Turnitin Plagiarism Review is not the same type of integration as the LTI 1.3 Standard Assignment under discussion here.
What will happen to existing assignments using the current LTI 1.1 configuration?
In the current Canvas course, nothing will change with existing Turnitin assignments or those in previous courses. They will look and feel and operate the same as before the LTI 1.3 upgrade. However, once the course is copied forward into a new term, those assignments will be automatically converted to the new Standard Assignment of Turnitin.
Why is the change happening?
This update provides our campus with the ability to take advantage of new product developments in Turnitin going forward.
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Exam Integrity in the Age of A.I.
Did you know Stan State has a site license for Respondus's LockDown Browser, and it can be required for the completion of any Canvas quiz? If you are concerned about students generating quiz answers by copying and pasting your quiz questions into ChatGPT, then requiring the use of LDB to complete the quiz may worth considering.
What is LockDown Browser?
LockDown Browser is a custom web browser that restricts the user to just their Canvas account. Within a course, LockDown Browser locks down the testing environment for a quiz. It prevents students from capturing screen content, opening other tabs or websites on the Internet unless those sites are part of a quiz question, and using any other programs on their computer. Only after the student submits the quiz are they permitted to quit the browser. At that point, all normal functionality on the computer is restored.
Watch an overview of LockDown Browser
How is LockDown Browser enabled?
- On the settings page of the Canvas course, open the Navigation list and enable the LockDown Browser tool. It will appear as a link in the course navigation (hidden from students)
- Open the LockDown Browser link to view the LockDown Browser dashboard
- Open the configuration arrow for the specific quiz that will require use of the LockDown Browser and click "Settings"
- Enable the LockDown Browser requirement
- Review the "Advanced Settings" if desired
- Click "Save + Close" to complete the set up process. No other changes need to be made to the quiz itself.
What is the student experience?
First, students generally must use a standard laptop or desktop computer to take a quiz that requires LockDown Browser. Mobile devices are not supported except for iPads and then only if the instructor enables that setting (not recommended). All campus computer labs have Respondus LockDown Browser installed.
Second, students will be prompted by the exam to download and launch the LockDown Browser application if they access the quiz using a regular web browser.
When launched, LockDown Browser goes directly to Canvas and the student logs in the same way they do in a regular web browser (including the Duo authentication). The student then opens the course and proceeds to the quiz. The usual "Start the Quiz" button appears and the rest of the quiz experience operates as normal.
Share this student overview video with your class: https://web.respondus.com/lockdownbrowser-student-video/
Things to consider
- LockDown Browser makes cheating on a Canvas quiz harder and more time-consuming but not impossible. In an unproctored environment, it cannot prevent actions that occur on other devices that students might have in their possession.
- For more control over the quiz-taking environment, consider enabling the webcam recording settings of LockDown Browser, Respondus Monitor.
- Students must have a practice quiz available beforehand. This allows them to get acquainted with the LockDown Browser process. Do not overlook this! Create a simple quiz with one or two questions, and configure that quiz to require LockDown Browser.
- Idea: consider using Canvas's module requirements feature to make the practice quiz a formal prerequisite for taking the real quiz. Learn more.
- Canvas quizzes with LockDown Browser enabled cannot accommodate an "open note" or "open book" quiz policy if those materials are only stored in Canvas. However, specific web domains can be allowed if configured in the LockDown Browser settings. Remember, the point of LockDown Browser is to "lock down" the environment to just the quiz.
Resources for more information
Have more questions? Contact OAT!
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AI Grading Assistance Pilot in Canvas
Instructure is developing an AI grading assistance feature in Canvas and Stan State instructors are invited to provide feedback.
What is it?
AI grading assistance is an enhancement within the Canvas Speedgrader that evaluates a student's submission against the assignment instructions and the instructor's rubric to suggest a final grade. The instructor can modify any of the suggested rubric scores or keep the AI's suggestions. The instructor then confirms the final score to be entered in the grade book. No auto-grading takes place. The goal of this pilot is an attempt to reduce bias in grading.
AI Grading Assistance is not openly available in Canvas. It is an opt-in pilot experience and must be enabled by OAT in a specific course.
Quick FAQ
- What kind of student submissions can be used for AI grading assistance?
- Only text-based or prose-based submissions can be evaluated by AI grading assistance. Submissions must be PDF or Word .docx files, or typed into the Canvas text editor.
- What kind of assignment details are required?
- The assignment must include a rubric and detailed instructions about the assignment, including appropriate submission length. The quality of the AI's grading suggestions will depend on the quality of the rubric it's given.
- Important - The rubric must contain a description of every rating level for each criteria. For example, the rubric must describe what makes a "5" response and what makes a "3" response in a criterion, etc. and repeat that for all criteria.
- Will students be able to see that AI was used in the grading?
- Yes, there is a disclaimer that students see next to any grade were a grading assistance score is part of the grade for that assignment.
- Is Canvas using student submissions to train an AI?
- No, student submissions are not used to train the LLM being used by the grading assistance feature (Anthropic's Claude).
- Are student submissions permanently stored by the AI?
- No, the content of the submission is sent to the LLM for the purpose of generating the grades but is not otherwise stored after that.
- Can I try it out on a previous course rather than my current course?
- Yes! In fact, this is recommended at this stage in the development of the feature.
- How do I use the Test Student as the student to grade?
- Download three examples of student work from the assignment. The examples should represent a range of grades from good to middling to poor.
- Click "View as Student" to switch into the student view for the assignment and then upload each submission as a separate attempt for the assignment.
- Exit the student view and launch Speedgrader in the assignment.
- Open one of the Test Student's submissions and initiate the AI grading assistance on it.
- Change the submission dropdown menu to select one of the other uploaded submissions.
- What if my assignment does not have a rubric?
- If the assignment does not already have a rubric attached, one can be created and easily attached for the purpose of testing the AI grading assistance feature.
Interested? Complete the sign up form.
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NEW! Annotate Image Content in Hypothesis
Hypothesis has broadened the scope of their social annotation tool to now include image content of all kinds. Students can drag-select an area of visual content or pin-drop at a specific location, and then type their annotation. As with text annotation, the source file must be in PDF format.
Does your PDF have a graphic or a photograph, or a picture of a chart or graph? Is it a map or historical artwork? Is it medical imagery? Is it musical notation? The power of social annotation is now possible in all of those cases!
Learn more about image annotation
Have questions? Contact OAT.
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NEW! Sync Padlet Grades to Canvas Grade Book
Padlet recently launched a cool new feature: grade syncing with Canvas!
What is Padlet?
Padlet is a shared bulletin board for a wide variety of collaborative activities. Built with visualization at its core, students add posts to a Padlet that can contain text, images, video, links, etc. Instructors can design the Padlet to be pin drops on a world map, a series of "categories" that students contribute to, or be a free-form posting space for a single topic.
Padlet can also be used as part of a Canvas assignment via the "External Tool" submission type.
Learn more about Padlet at Stan State
What is Grade Sync?
While instructors could always assign a Padlet, it has not been possible to provide scores within the Padlet for student posts. With Grade Sync, that now changes and Padlets have a scoring tool in them. Best of all, that scoring tool can send its grades back to Canvas with one click of a button!
Things to know about Grade Sync:
- The true point value of the assignment is set in the Canvas assignment.
- In the Padlet, the instructor completes grading by opening the Gradebook item from the '...' menu of the Padlet
- By default, the Padlet grade book values the activity at 100 points. This can be left alone even if it does not match the point value in the assignment.
- The instructor also must determine how the final grade will be calculated before being sent to Canvas. This is necessary because students can make multiple posts in a Padlet and each post can have its own grade. Which grade to send back to Canvas?
- The calculation choices are "Highest score" or "Average score"
- The instructor then assigns points to each student's post(s) in the Padlet based on the current maximum.
- Finally, the instructor enables the switch "Sync grades to LMS" and clicks "Submit" to sync the grades.
Back in the Canvas grade book, the scores will appear in the column of the assignment!
Important: the grade shown in the Canvas grade book is calculated as a percentage based on the percentage grade in the Padlet. If the Canvas assignment is worth 10 points and a student is scored at 80/100 in the Padlet, the grade in Canvas will appear as 8/10.
Padlet help page (and FAQ): Sync grade passback on Padlet to your LMS
Questions? Contact OAT!
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Create Micro Lessons in Panopto
Reuse content from full-length lectures in smaller segments to drive student engagement using the new "Save As" feature in Panopto. While the complete video remains available in your library, Panopto now lets you extract and save shorter segments from those videos to share as independent learning content.
Perhaps there's a topic that you introduce and define as part of a larger lecture. Or maybe you want to create a "highlight reel" of a longer lecture. With "Save As", you can create a stand-alone clip to share with students who might just need a quick refresher on the topic without having to watch a full lecture.
How To Save As
1. Open the full-length video in your Panopto account and then click the Edit icon to open the video editor:
2. Zoom in using the magnifying glass slider above the timeline.
3. Edit out portions of the video by clicking and dragging your mouse on the timeline. Repeat this to select as many sections of the video to hide as necessary. Footage that is not selected is what will be shown in the new micro lesson.
Note A: The remaining visible sections of the timeline will be played back-to-back in the micro lesson.
Note B: Do not click "Apply" - there is no need to apply these edits to the existing full-length video.
4. Once you've edited out the unneeded sections of the video, click the overflow menu from the top-right of the nav bar and click "Save As".
4. Provide a name for the new clip and choose where to save it. Finally, select the switch to "Discard cut sections in the new video". This will throw away all the edited/highlighted sections and leave just the visible sections as the content for the micro lesson.
5. Deploy the micro lesson in Canvas just like any other Panopto video!
Questions? Contact OAT
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Fall Professional Development Opportunities + Recent Grads
From the Chancellor's Office, the Fall Online Course Services professional development opportunities are open to all for registration. Each course is 3 weeks, asynchronous, and facilitated by trained CSU faculty & staff. All courses are free of charge.
Fall Session 1: October 6-26, 2025
Fall Session 2: November 3-23, 2025
Content Areas & Courses
There are two areas of investigation, both with two courses.
1. Preparing Quality Online Courses
2. Artificial Intelligence Courses
* Please also visit CA State University AI Commons to learn more about other opportunities.
Recent Stan State Graduates
The following individuals completed one of those courses over the summer. Congratulations!
AI Tools For Teaching & Learning
Michelle Butts
Dinorah Fernandez
Sandra Garcia-Sanborn
Kara Herrick
James Johns
David Jomaoas
Introduction to Teaching Online Using QLT
Lori Washten
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