Important Canvas Updates for SY 2025–26
May 8, 2025
This update is for Accelerate Education school partners who deliver our courses via the Canvas LMS.
As you prepare for the 2025–26 school year, Accelerate Education is excited to share we have made a number of enhancements to our Canvas course catalog that will provide schools with updated curriculum, enhanced student tools, and a more streamlined Canvas setup process!
🆕 2025–26 Course Cartridge Updates & Guidance
We kindly ask that all schools take a fresh copy of each course cartridge this year. This is essential to ensure your courses include the latest features and improvements described below.
🔄 Assessment Delivery & New Quizzes
While our assessments will continue to be delivered as Classic Quizzes by default (due to Canvas limitations with the Common Cartridge export), we’re excited to share that migration to New Quizzes is now fully supported during course import. The process is simple and seamless, allowing your school to take full advantage of Canvas’s enhanced assessment engine if desired.
🧰 New Student Tools in Grade 6–12 Courses
This Fall we are introducing a suite of new Student Tools that will be embedded directly into lesson activities across grades 6–12. These tools are designed to:
- Support personalized learning
- Boost student engagement
- Offer flexible interaction and remediation opportunities
Watch for additional information on the release of our Student Tools this summer.
🚀 New LTI 1.3 Integration for Select Courses
We’re excited to announce support for LTI 1.3 Integration for the following courses that are currently distributed as Thin Common Cartridges:
- AP Computer Science A & B
- AP Computer Science Principles A & B
- Digital Savvy A & B
The LTI 1.3 standard offers several key advantages for these courses, most notably real-time grading notifications! Teachers can be alerted instantly via Canvas notifications when a student submits any teacher-graded work.
Interested in upgrading to LTI 1.3 for these courses? Reach out and we’ll walk you through next steps.
⚙️ Reminder: Streamlined LTI 1.1 Integration for Courses
As of last year, Accelerate Education has moved away from requiring separate course-level LTI external tool configurations. Within our SY25-26 course exports, applicable course variables have been embedded directly within each lesson activity. Schools taking new cartridges will only need to configure a single, organization-level External Tool to enjoy plug-and-play course imports without additional setup.
💬 Threaded Discussions Now Enabled
Following changes from Instructure that temporarily disabled threaded replies, we’ve updated our entire course catalog to re-enable threaded discussions by default. This ensures students will have access to the full interactive discussion experience as originally designed in our courses.
📁 Updated Dropbox Organization & Retired Courses
To support a smooth transition into the new school year, you’ll notice a new folder structure in our shared Dropbox:
- A new “Retired 24–25” folder now holds cartridges for all courses being deprecated by upcoming new releases.
- All new and active course cartridges will be added to the main folder as they are released.
The full set of SY 25–26 cartridges will be available by July 1, 2025. If any title is delayed or split into parts, we’ll notify you directly.
If you have any questions about these updates, migration steps, new features, or cartridge access, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re here to support you every step of the way as you prepare for the year ahead.