In the Gradebook Settings of the Canvas Gradebook area, a View Hidden Grades indicator option is available. This will allow Teachers and Admins to see an icon marking any grades that have not yet been posted to students.
This will help you quickly identify which grades are hidden from students, reducing confusion and ensuring more accurate communication about grade visibility.
This feature is available for use from 25th September 2025.
How do I use this feature?
To use this feature, you would navigate to the Gradebook area of your course in Canvas.
You would then locate the ‘Gradebook Settings’ by selecting the settings option (cog icon) in the top right corner of the screen. Once here, you will navigate to the ‘View Options’ tab where you will be able to select the ‘View hidden grades indicator’. This enables the hidden grades indicator within the Gradebook of the particular course you are in.
The gradebook settings area in Canvas Gradebook where you can enable ‘view hidden grades indicator’.
What does the feature look like in action?
In the Gradebook, an orange indicator displays which grades have not been posted next to each grade where this is applicable.
An orange dot shown against a grade in the Canvas Gradebook to indicate the grade has not been posted.
Find out more
You can find out more about the functionality of the Canvas Gradebook on the Canvas Course Navigation website, under the heading ‘Grades’.
The Learning Enhancement and Technology (LET) Team in the Learning and Teaching Development Service (LTDS) were joined by colleagues from NUMBAS, Library Reading Lists, Digital Adoption, FMS Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Team and representatives from the Artificial Intelligence (AI) in LTDS.
The LET Team were delighted at the turnout on the day and the fantastic conversations that were able to take place. Find out more about the event and what colleagues thought about the event within this blog post.
What difficulties do students have accessing the material we provide?
How do students surmount those difficulties?
How do you improve the accessibility of your material?
We’re putting on an event to help answer those questions.
It’s important that all of our digital services are accessible to their users, whether they’re students or colleagues. The Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations set out some legal requirements that we must meet.
But digital accessibility is a complex topic and many colleagues have found it hard to understand what they need to do to ensure their teaching material is accessible.
At our digital accessibility demo day, you can have a go at accessing university teaching material at a selection of stations simulating different access requirements and supports, including:
Screen reader
Speech to text
Keyboard-only interaction
Low vision
Low mobility
Magnification
Canvas Ally
We’ll have plenty of pointers to guidance and training opportunities to help you improve the accessibility of your material.
People from LTDS, NUIT and the Disability Interest Group will be there to offer support and answer any questions you may have about digital accessibility.
Colleagues at the Digital Accessibility Demo Day held in March 2025.
Time and location
The event will take place on Wednesday 5th March 2025, in the Boiler House. We are hosting a drop in for colleagues from 10:30-12:00 and for students from 12:30-14:00.
The Boiler House is in the middle of campus, between the Armstrong Building and the Student Union. Access is step-free.
There’s no presentation as part of the session – just drop in and talk to one of the facilitators.
As we begin the new academic year, NULA has introduced a range of new features and enhancements in the staff-facing system designed to make learning analytics more accessible, informative, and useful. These updates build on feedback from colleagues and aim to provide clearer insights into student engagement, easier navigation of the system, and more practical tools to support tutoring conversations.
Metric help pop-over
To make NULA’s metrics clearer and easier to interpret, a new metric help pop-over has been introduced. This feature provides quick, accessible explanations of each engagement metric—such as attendance, Canvas activity, submissions, and days since last activity—along with the data sources used to calculate them. By simply clicking on the hotspot icons in the student list or student overview pages, staff can see detailed guidance without leaving the page.
Student attendance grid view
The student attendance grid in the student overview has been upgraded to give staff more flexibility and clearer insights. Instead of a fixed 30-day snapshot, colleagues can now filter attendance by a date range, with a simplified table view, making it easier to spot patterns that matter in student conversations.
Tiers
The new Tiers feature makes it easier to filter and navigate student data by School, Faculty, or course. Depending on their role within the system, this means staff can quickly focus on the level of detail most relevant to them, whether looking across a whole Faculty or drilling down to a single course. Tiers also pave the way for more granular engagement metrics, giving a clearer picture of how students are engaging.
Student Engagement history
The student engagement history on a student overview page has been enhanced to give staff greater flexibility when reviewing patterns over time. You can now apply date range filters to focus on specific periods and choose to view individual data sets—including attendance, submissions, or Canvas engagement—separately. This makes it easier to spot trends, identify changes in behaviour, and have more informed conversations with students about their engagement.
These updates improve NULA’s usability and provide staff with clearer, more flexible insights into student engagement. Additional features and enhancements will be introduced throughout the year, continuing to expand the system’s capabilities and support for staff and students.
By Em Beattie, Stage 2, Geography, Politics and Sociology student
This summer I worked as an intern for the learning analytics team. The learning analytics team has been developing a new system for Newcastle University students to allow them to review and have access to their own learning analytics data. Learning analytics refers to the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of data, for the purpose of understanding and improving students’ learning. Student’s data is collected from a variety of sources to enable students to view their attendance, engagement and module summaries. The aim of this new roll out is to empower and positively impact students’ academic achievement and progress for smarter insights and stronger outcomes.
My key role was to contribute to the methodology and development of student communication channels, organise pop ups, analyse and manipulate data, contribute to design and evaluation of material and present findings. I really wanted this experience to develop my career skills, and I am passionate about academic growth and attainment.
I found the internship on MyCareer, which is a Newcastle University platform which provides internships and work experience students can apply for. After finding the learning analytics internship and reading through the description I thought it would be a valuable and interesting opportunity. The applying process was very simple I attached my CV and answered three questions on how I would manage the hours required to work, what skills I brought to the internship and why I am the right person for the experience. When writing these answers, I used the STAR technique to provide efficient details of skills I brought to the table. After submitting my application, I was fortunately emailed a few weeks later asking if I was available for an interview. I was very nervous for the interview as I had never had an in-person interview before. However, to prepare I read over the description of the role, writing down on a notepad what skills I could bring to each of the tasks I would be completing and ideas I had. I also looked at the advice Newcastle university gave about internships on their website. https://www.ncl.ac.uk/careers/making-applications/interviews-assessments/interviews/. After I completed my first ever in person interview which although was nerve wracking provided me with real world experience which will be super helpful later in life, I waited to hear for the result.
Before starting the internship, I was slightly nervous, but I worked with an incredible team which were very supportive all the way. The learning analytics internship has given me an incredible experience, teaching me valuable skills and lessons that have allowed me to develop both professionally and personally.
Working with the learning analytics team has been so much fun. Through hosting pop-ups and interviewing students, I learned how to gather meaningful feedback, listen actively, and represent student voices in a constructive way. This experience also helped me understand the importance of real student insights and how they can inform and improve educational strategies. Although the pop up was quieter than expected as some students had left to go home for summer, we still gathered a range of responses online and in person.
After the pop up and students filling in online forms, I analysed data which taught me valuable skills of critical thinking and paying close attention to detail to observe patterns and trends of student’s responses. This experience confirmed my interest in qualitative and quantitative research, and I am now more confident in analysing data.
I thoroughly enjoyed providing a student perspective and spin to the marketing research. Another one of my tasks for the internship was to develop communication channels for students. There were multiple channels that were highlighted from the pop-up including emails, canvas, social media and in person discussion. For social media channels I utilised Canva, which was a fun experience to design a social media post about the new learning analytics system. Additionally, I also helped design the structure of the student facing webpages, using PowerPoint to design an example and writing descriptions around explaining why videos and images should be used. As someone who lacks creative skills, I found it really fun to try and design social media posts and webpages for learning analytics and felt it definitely developed my creativity.
The best part of the internship was knowing that what I was working on would help current students in their academic growth allowing students to set targets and review their engagement of their work.
An example of a type of day from the internship includes a meeting which would either be held in the Kingsgate building or remotely on teams depending on the team’s availability. During this meeting we discussed what we had all been working on, gave each other feedback and ideas and planned our tasks for next week. A lot of the work I did complete was online such as analysing data, creating ideas for communication channels and researching and comparing other universities learning analytics system.
The experience massively helped my confidence, interviewing students and presenting my research pushed me out of my comfort zone but helped me become much more comfortable in putting myself out there.
One challenge I faced was managing all the weekly tasks. Some weeks were busier than others, but on those busy weeks I used my notebook to schedule when I was completing each task, how long the tasks would take, when meetings where and if I had any questions during those tasks to keep track of everything.
One tip I would give to students doing an internship is to write down the skills that they have learnt during the experience with a description. I have done this, and it was helpful as I completed my student internship pathway reflection and will be useful for future interviews and applications as I can explain clearly what skills I developed from this experience.
Looking into the future…
Moving into third year is scary but knowing I am bringing valuable skills that I have learnt from this experience makes me feel more confident and ready. I am looking forward to use study goal to improve my academic progress and create targets to better myself.
We believe that accessibility is key to creating an inclusive and supportive learning environment for all students.
Our commitment to accessibility is reflected in the wide range of resources and tools we offer to ensure that every student can engage fully with their studies.
From the Canvas Baseline, which provides essential best practice information and promotes consistency across courses, to Ally for Canvas, which enhances the accessibility of digital learning content, we are dedicated to making education accessible to everyone.
In addition to these tools, we offer training and courses such as the Accessible Documents Training workshop and the Accessibility in Practice Canvas course.
Join us as we explore the various accessibility resources available at Newcastle University and discover how they can benefit you and your academic journey.
Canvas Baseline
The Newcastle University Canvas Baseline outlines the essential requirements for all University modules within the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It ensures students receive a core set of materials, including programme-related information and details about learning, assessment, and skills for each module.
The Baseline aims to create consistency across modules, provide clear guidance on available information and resources, and offer a foundation for module development while enhancing student engagement through Canvas.
More information on the Canvas Baseline can be found on the Canvas Baseline pages on the Learning and Teaching Website.
New Courses Guidance
The Get your Canvas courses ready has a checklist section provides a step-by-step guide for preparing Canvas courses. This includes checking your courses for accessibility in both Canvas and Ally.
More information on New Course Guidance can be found on the New Courses Guidance page on the Learning and Teaching website.
Ally
Ally for Canvas is a tool integrated into Newcastle University’s Canvas platform to enhance the accessibility of digital learning content. It automatically generates alternative formats of course files, such as MP3, electronic braille, ePub, and HTML, making it easier for students to access materials in the format that suits them best.
For instructors, Ally provides an accessibility score for uploaded files and offers guidance on how to improve them. This helps ensure that course content is inclusive and accessible to all students.
More information on Ally in Canvas can be found on the Ally for Canvas page on the Learning and Teaching website.
Accessible Documents Training
In this workshop we uncover why accessible practices are so important for our students and colleagues.
The workshop includes short activities to introduce participants to tools and techniques to ensure digital materials are accessible, and includes audience interaction via Vevox.
If you are interested in taking part in this training, please contact: ltds@newcastle.ac.uk
Accessibility in Practice – Canvas Course (Self Enrol)
Learning and Teaching Development Service (LTDS) host an Accessibility in Practice Canvas course. The course provides you with some core information, skills, and techniques for embedding accessibility into your teaching, learning, and work practice, and in making your digital resources accessible to everyone.
Accessibility benefits everybody, not just individuals with additional needs. You can self enrol on the course to complete at your own pace.
Ally is an external tool integrated into Canvas that automatically checks course materials against WCAG 2.0 accessibility standards and provides feedback on their accessibility. It’s important to note that Ally doesn’t evaluate the quality of your course content; it simply assesses how well the content meets accessibility standards.
This video provides an overview of Ally in Canvas and how it works within our Virtual Learning Environment:
Alternative Formats
A beneficial feature is that it also enables students to download accessible alternative formats of published module materials, without the need to create and upload these ourselves. These formats are made available with the original file, so students can find everything in one convenient location.
While the alternative formats are created for you, you can, if you want, disable alternative formats for any individual content item for whatever reason (a good example being translated versions of texts on foreign language courses).
Alternative formats made available by Ally are:
Tagged PDF;
HTML;
e-Pub;
Electronic braille;
Audio (text-to-speech conversion);
BeeLine Reader;
Course Accessibility Report
Accessibility Summary
The course accessibility report acts as a complement to the existing accessibility indicators. It provides an accessibility summary and overview at the course level.
The report gives an overall accessibility score for the course, which is an average of the accessibility scores of all course materials. Scores range from Low (0-33%), Medium (34-66%), High (67-99%), to Perfect (100%).
Detailed Feedback
It identifies specific files that need remediation, categorizing them by accessibility score and issue type. This helps instructors prioritize which content to fix first 1.
Guidance and Corrective Actions
The report provides detailed explanations of why certain issues are problems and offers step-by-step instructions on how to fix them.
Instructors can even upload corrected versions of files directly within Canvas.
The aim of this week is to help you strive to make all your learning resources as accessible as possible. This also extends to our video content, which plays a crucial role in the educational experience.
In this blog, we will explore the importance of video captioning and how it can be effectively implemented using the Panopto system (also known as Recap).
When we refer to video content, we mean recordings provided to students for educational purposes. These recordings are typically delivered via Canvas and include lecture recordings, teaching presentations, and other instructional videos.
By ensuring that these videos are captioned, we can enhance accessibility for all students, including those who are deaf or hard of hearing, non-native English speakers, and individuals who benefit from reading along while listening.
What is ReCap (Panopto)?
Panopto, also known as Recap, is a video platform at Newcastle University. This system facilitates the recording, editing, and sharing of video content, making it an essential tool for both educators and students.
The primary reason for using Panopto is to enhance the learning experience. By providing students with access to lecture recordings and other educational videos, Panopto allows them to review material at their own pace. This flexibility is particularly beneficial for revisiting complex topics and catching up on missed lectures.
Moreover, Panopto significantly contributes to accessibility. It supports students with diverse learning needs by offering features such as video captioning, ensuring that all students, including those who are deaf or hard of hearing, can benefit from the content.
Captioning in Panopto (ReCap)
The ReCap service (Panopto) provides the ability to add ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) generated captions to your recordings.
The University recognises that automatically generated captions are not 100% correct and have published a captions disclaimer for viewers.
We recommend reviewing automatically generated captions and making light-touch edits before making them available.
How Do I Edit Captions in Panopto (ReCap)
The support pages of the Panopto website offer great advice on how to work with captions in Panopto.
The How to Edit or Delete Captions guide provides a comprehensive guide on how to edit or delete captions in Panopto. It outlines the steps required to access the caption editor, make necessary adjustments to the text, and save changes.
The guide also covers how to delete captions if they are no longer needed. Additionally, it includes tips for ensuring caption accuracy and improving the overall quality of video content. This resource is essential for anyone looking to enhance the accessibility and usability of their Panopto recordings.
Welcome to Day 2 of our Accessibility Awareness blog series. In this post, you can learn about aspects of document design to help you create documents that are accessible from the go. By ensuring that your documents are designed in an accessible format when you create them, anyone using them have the opportunity to engage with the content from the get go. Making a document accessible does not need to happen after the fact. You can do it as you create, and make a difference from now.
Our Learning and Teaching Development Service (LTDS) have created a helpful crib sheet available that covers the do’s and don’ts to enable you to design documents for a diverse range of learners. Take a look at the Designing for Diverse Learners resource – and why not save a copy to your ‘favourites’ or put a copy in your office space?
We’ll now dive into some of the guidance from the Designing for Diverse Learners resource in more detail to understand ways you can design documents to ensure that they are accessible:
On each page, you’ll find essential digital document design guidelines along with step-by-step instructions on how to implement these changes in your own digital documents.
Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) is an international event intended to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital accessibility and inclusion.
This year the event will be held on 15 May 2025.
To honour GAAD, we will be posting a series of blog posts and videos highlighting issues and provide guidance on accessibility issues (more on that later in this post).
Let’s begin by exploring what digital accessibility means, identifying the individuals it affects, and challenging common misconceptions about accessibility.
What is Digital Accessibility?
Digital accessibility refers to the ability of people with disabilities/impairments to independently consume and/or interact with digital.
This can include web content and applications (including on mobile devices).
The Diverse 21st Century Learner
Digital accessibility is often perceived as a set of practices aimed solely at helping individuals with disabilities. However, accessibility is much broader and benefits everyone, regardless of their abilities or circumstances. By incorporating accessibility into digital design, we create inclusive environments that enhance usability and convenience for all users.
Our learners come from a wide range of backgrounds, each with unique needs shaped by their individual circumstances. Unfortunately, these needs are sometimes overlooked, particularly in terms of accessibility.
These learners could include:
Learners with Visible Disabilities
This can include individuals with visible disabilities, such with mobility impairments, visual impairments, or hearing impairments.
Learners with Invisible Disabilities
This could include users with invisible disabilities, such as cognitive impairments, mental health conditions, or chronic illnesses.
Learners with Temporary Disabilities
Users experiencing temporary disabilities, such as a broken arm or temporary vision impairment.
International Students
Students from different countries who may face language barriers and cultural differences.
Professionals Seeking more Education
Working professionals looking to further their education.
Learners with Different Preferences
Users with specific preferences, such as those who prefer dark mode or larger text.
Parents
Parents who may be juggling multiple responsibilities and need efficient and accessible digital tools.
Commuters
Individuals who frequently travel and use digital tools on the go.
Learners Who Use Mobile Devices
Users primarily accessing digital content via mobile devices.
Offline Users
Users who prefer or need to access content offline due to limited internet connectivity.
With knowledge of who our potential learners could be, we can help create digital content that is accessible and helps towards meeting their needs.
What is Happening This Week
To help our colleagues and students at Newcastle to engage with accessibility content, colleagues in the Learning and Teaching Development Service (LTDS) are going to be sharing blog posts each day during this week on Digital Accessibility.
Schedule of Posts
Tuesday 13th May 2025 – Document Design Fundamentals
Wednesday 14th May 2025 – Creating Accessible Videos in Recap (Panopto)
Thursday 15th May 2025 – Anthology Ally in Canvas
Friday 16th May 2025 – Accessibility Resources Available at Newcastle University
