As development of USF Systems into Canvas continues, we are still on track to have First Day Attendance (FDA) go live in January 2013 and eGrades live for spring 2013 midterms.
In one of the recent updates, Canvas added to the number of places that external tools could be placed. In particular, tools can now be placed in the Left Navigation Menu. There are a couple of nice options that will make it easy to display tools only to the folks that need them
1) A Navigation Link can be enabled or disabled by default. That is, the link in the Nav menu can be visible to all allowed members of the course, or it can be disabled and not visible, by default. To make a disabled Nav link visible, the isntructor goes to Settings > Navigation, and drags the desired nav item up.
Tools that affect the vast majority of courses (eGrades, Library Course Guides, etc.) will be enabled by default. Courses that use a specific tools like Panopto, Elluminate, Ares Course Reserves, etc. will be disabled by default.
2) A navigation link can be seen by any visitor to a course (public courses only), by members of the course (students + course admins), or by course admins only (instructor, TA, builder). Tools like eGrades & FDA will be set to course admins only, students and visitors will never know the links exist. Tools like Library Course Guides would be visible to all members, but not to non-members. I don’t have an example off-hand of a tool that would make sense to be visible to the world.
Example screenshot:
OLITS Teaching and Learning Blog 