Learning Systems Announcements

Put Some Tech in Your T&L

End of Semester Reminders – Spring 2026

by Jamillah Martin

Greetings VCU Faculty,

We hope your Spring semester has gone well. As you wrap up your course and transition into the summer, please review the items below to help guide your end‑of‑term preparations.

Fall 2026 Course Shells Available Now

Course shells for the Fall 2026 semester are officially available in Canvas for all instructors. As you prepare for the upcoming term, remember that students won’t see your course until you choose to publish it.

Publishing your course makes it visible on students’ Canvas dashboards and opens the door for them to access your materials. If you need a quick refresher, you can review step‑by‑step guidance on how to publish or unpublish a Canvas course.

Need a Hand Wrapping Up the Semester?

If you’re working through your end‑of‑semester checklist and could use a little support, we’ve got you covered.

For a quick overview of available resources for both Canvas and Kaltura, head over to the Help & Resources tab on the Learning Systems website. It’s a great starting point for guides, troubleshooting tips, and ways to get assistance as you close out the term.

Submit Final Grades Directly into Banner

Final grades are due by noon on May 12, 2025, via Faculty eServices. 

If you use Canvas to store and calculate your course grades, you’ll see an option in your course navigation (Ellucian Grade Passback 1.3) that allows you to send those grades directly to Banner once they’re finalized.

For instructors teaching cross‑listed courses, grades can be submitted from the merged Canvas roster, eliminating the need to enter grades separately in eServices for each individual section.

Please note that only the instructor of record, as listed in Banner, is able to submit grades through this tool.

Verify Grades After Submitting from Canvas

After you’ve pushed your final grades from Canvas, we recommend taking a moment to confirm that everything transferred correctly into eServices. Verifying your grade submission helps ensure that all student records are accurate and complete.

For general information about grade entry and available support, visit the Banner Grade Entry page.

For more information, please see: go.vcu.edu/canvas-ilp.

Carrying Over Incompletes to the Next Semester

Last day for grades of incomplete to be converted from spring semester or summer sessions is December 7, 2026. See the Academic Calendar for details.

If you have students finishing the course with an Incomplete, there are a few required steps you’ll need to complete before the term concludes on May 31, 2026. After that date, the course will move into Read‑Only mode, and you won’t be able to make changes.

For step-by-step instructions, visit the Managing Students with an Incompletes Status page or contact [email protected].

Updates to Canvas 3rd-Party Tool (LTI) Integrations

Starting June 1, 2026, the university will transition away from LTI 1.1 integrations. Please review the following changes to ensure your future course materials remain accessible and compliant:

Key Changes & Deadlines:

  • Discontinuing LTI 1.1: Effective June 1, the permission to manually integrate LTI 1.1 tools into individual courses will be disabled.
  • Legacy Support: Existing LTI 1.1 configurations will continue to function in current courses, but you will be unable to add them to new or future course shells.
  • LTI 1.3 Requirements: All new integrations must use the LTI 1.3 standard. These require comprehensive IT governance review and can take significant time to approve.
  • Limited Install Windows: Installations occur during specific change windows throughout the year. Advanced planning is essential.

Resources for Faculty: To see a list of tools currently available, view the status of in-progress requests, or start a new request for a vendor, please visit our dedicated resource pages:

Canvas Accessibility Resources

VCU remains committed to providing an inclusive digital learning environment that meets the needs of all students. To support this mission, we have curated a suite of resources and tools within Canvas designed to streamline the creation of accessible course content.

  • Integrated Accessibility Checker: Every Canvas course now features a native Accessibility Checker within the Rich Content Editor. This tool acts as a real-time assistant, identifying common issues—such as missing image alt-text or insufficient color contrast—and providing guided steps to fix them instantly.
  • Instructure Accessibility Toolkit: For faculty looking to dive deeper into inclusive design, we recommend exploring the Instructure Accessibility Toolkit. This comprehensive resource outlines the technical workflows and pedagogical strategies used to maintain high accessibility standards across our LMS.
  • Platform Transparency: We work closely with our vendor to ensure the Canvas platform continues to meet or exceed global WCAG standards. You can review the latest Canvas Accessibility Standards to see how the platform supports assistive technologies like screen readers and keyboard-only navigation.
  • Additional Tools for Course Optimization: VCU provides specialized tools from CidiLabs to help faculty maintain organized and accessible content. TidyUP allows instructors to scan their courses for “bloat”—identifying and deleting unused files or empty folders that can clutter the student experience. For a deeper accessibility dive beyond the native checker, uDOIT (Universal Design Online Content Inspection Tool) performs a comprehensive scan of the entire course, providing a centralized dashboard to identify and batch-fix accessibility issues in one place.

For personalized assistance or to learn more about creating accessible materials, please visit the VCU Digital Accessibility site.

Annual Academic Records Retention Update 

Effective April 1, 2026, the university began the annual records retention process for legacy course data. To comply with the Library of Virginia’s records destruction policies, academic courses that concluded prior to June 30, 2021, have been identified for permanent deletion.

What you need to know:

  • Identification: Impacted courses will be marked with a “DNR” (Do Not Retain) prefix in the course name starting April 1.
  • Deletion Date: These courses will be permanently deleted on June 1, 2026.
  • Irreversibility: Once deleted, these records cannot be recovered.
  • Annual Process: This is now an annual compliance measure; courses will be identified and slated for deletion based on the same retention threshold moving forward.

How you can Prepare & The Course Creation Tool:

When creating course shells you should use the export and import workflow for moving course information from old courses into new shells. You can use our non-academic course creation tool to make a primary template to store course exports.

Training Opportunities

Upcoming Opportunities – For upcoming training, you can register at www.training.vcu.edu  (Keyword: Canvas, Kaltura, or Mobius)

Individual or Group Faculty Training

Faculty who would like individual or group/departmental training can request a session anytime by selecting the “Request Training” button on the Learning Systems website.

These sessions are designed for instructors who want to learn how to use the instructional tools supported by Learning Systems, including Canvas and Kaltura.

Training Recordings

We hope you had a chance to take part in this spring’s training opportunities. If you weren’t able to attend, you can still explore the recorded sessions; most of which were led by Learning Systems’ Support Lead, Jon Reed, in collaboration with the LEDstudios instructional design team.

You can also visit the Learning Systems Academy to browse a library of short, on‑demand videos covering everything from getting started in Canvas to using Kaltura effectively.

VCU IT Status

To stay current on IT systems and service outages, you can subscribe to updates on the IT Status page (click “Subscribe to updates” in the top right corner).

If you run into any issues with subscribing or have questions, email [email protected]. The IT Service Management Office is available to provide assistance and support.

Academic Technologies Support

Academic Technologies regularly shares updates about the support services we offer, and we encourage you to stay connected by subscribing to our blogs. You can subscribe to all of them or simply choose the ones most relevant to your work.

When you visit each blog, look for the “Subscribe” section on the right side of the page. Enter your email address and click the subscribe button to receive updates directly in your inbox.

Additionally, the Instructional Technologies Toolkit will help you navigate to the information and resources you need.

Share your Feedback

Your feedback is a valuable resource to our team’s continued success.

If you’d like to provide general feedback about any of the systems we support, the training we offer, suggestions for improvement, or comments about our website, please email [email protected]. We appreciate hearing from you and value your input.

Have a wonderful and refreshing summer break!

Categories Accessibility, Canvas, End of Semester, Faculty, Online Teaching and Development, Teaching with Technology, Workshops and Training

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