Welcome to the COLRS Catch Up! We'd like to start by introducing Melanie Weigel, who is joining us as an Extra Help eLearning Specialist! Melanie holds a Master's degree in Library and Information Science from the UIUC. She was a K-12 teacher and librarian for 17 years and now serves as public library director. She brings a wealth of teaching, educational technology, OER, and instructional design experience to our team. She’ll be working with us on our Canvas Course Accessibility Process, as well as  Regular and Substantive Interaction initiatives.

There are a lot of updates in this Catch Up, especially in the "Canvas catch up" section. Please take a moment to review these changes, and do not hesitate to reach out with any questions or concerns.

In case you missed it

In October, our focus was journaling! We shared some ways that journals can be used in your courses in this month's Teaching Tip, and we expanded on those ideas during our Journaling Workshop. Thank you so much to all who attended!

Instructor spotlight

Journaling is a powerful tool for many reasons, but above all else, it allows students and instructors to develop meaningful relationships. This is crucial for all learners, but it can be especially valuable in online courses where students might otherwise feel alone and isolated.

In the video below, Dr. Jennifer Martin, Associate Professor in the School of Education, discusses how she implements journaling in her online courses and how it can benefit both students and instructors.

Call to action

Next month, we're focusing on online discussions! Discussions are extremely important components of online courses, but it can be difficult to make them feel fresh and exciting. If you'd like to share successful online discussion stories with your colleagues, email COLRS at colrs@uis.edu. We'd love to showcase your work!

Canvas catch up

Things change quickly in Canvas! We've got a lot to share this month; as always, please reach out with any questions!

Copyleaks

We recently received a notice from our Copyleaks representative that there would be changes to their AI detector. In order to prepare for these changes, Copyleaks will be down for maintenance on November 2 from 12 AM to 8 AM. The changes to the AI detector will go into effect on November 10. To quote our representative, "You may notice some differentiation in results on scans that are completed before versus after this change. If you are currently using a percentage threshold to uphold policies, you may need recalibrate this number. In other words, you may see an increase in cases on either side of this threshold."

We have had many conversations with our contacts at Copyleaks about the problematic nature of making these updates in the middle of a semester, but that has not deterred them from moving forward with these changes regardless. Please let us know if you notice any changes in your Copyleaks reports and are concerned about those results.

Winter Intersession & Spring 2026 course creation

Winter Intersession and Spring 2026 courses will be created in Canvas on November 10. Students are enrolled about two weeks prior to the start of term. If you would like to start working on your Winter or Spring courses before November 10, please reach out to a member of the COLRS staff, and we can create a Gold Course for you to begin working on your content. These date reminders are also on the home page of the Instructor Guide.

Issues with Canvas in Safari

Recently, a few instructors who use Safari as their primary web browser have reported issues where a pop-up box prompting the instructor to login prevents them from being able to complete work in Canvas (especially grading). We recommend that you switch to a different browser (like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox), if possible.

Other Canvas updates

• You now have the ability to enable an indicator for seeing which grades are hidden from students.
• Canvas has been slowly releasing updates to their rubrics tool as part of the Enhanced Rubrics  redesign. Most recently, they've made the following upgrades available:
  • Alerts to let you know if an assignment has a set point value that differs from the point value on the rubric
  • Improved functionality when using rubrics to grade assignments in SpeedGrader
• SpeedGrader has also had some upgrades recently:
  • If you combine different course sections together in Canvas, you can now filter SpeedGrader by section, including selecting multiple sections at once.
  • The types of feedback you can leave students as a comment have expanded. In addition to the types of comments you could leave before, you can now include images, links to course content, or mathematical notation in your comments.

Looking ahead

It likely isn't surprising to you that we admire and respect the work that Cidi Labs does. DesignPLUS, UDOIT, and TidyUP are some of our favorite tools, but we also love their monthly newsletters related to topics that help online instructors improve their courses, including this piece about the myths surrounding course accessibility from October 2025. As we continue to ramp up our accessibility efforts on campus, it's important that we don't compromise on the incredible course content that will help our students learn best.

We'd also love to see you at our upcoming workshops!

COLRS will be presenting at this year's Illinois Online Higher Education Symposium on November 7. To see our presentation (as well as the incredible presentations of others across the state), register for the free symposium today!

Thank you for your incredible work with our students. We’ll catch up again soon!

— Emily, Carrie, Scott, Taylor, Lyba, & Melanie