For all of you Google Drive fans and everyone else who is forced to use Google Drive against your will, take some time today to color code your folders. Perhaps you want to more easily see which Google Drive account you are in. You can make the first folder in your work account the color “pool” (light blue) and make the first folder in your personal Google Drive account “toy eggplant.” (Pool? Toy eggplant??). I suspect that someone who used to work for Crayola now works for Google. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe the color-namer at Google is taking this opportunity to add a little something to their portfolio so that they can get their dream job at Crayola.

Or you can color code by mood. Do you have a folder for a committee or a project you are just not leaping up and down about? Perhaps “earthworm” would be a good folder color match for your feelings.

Go to https://drive.google.com. Right-click on a folder. Mouse over “Change color,” select a color from the palette. If you hover over the color for a second, the color name will appear. After mousing over all the colors, send me your favorite color name.

After receiving yet another campus-wide meeting invitation for an event in an ongoing series that I am never going to attend, I decided I was done manually processing these invitations. By manually processing, I mean, clicking “decline.” Every. Single. Time.

Unfortunately, there is not a way (yet?) to tell Outlook to automatically decline meeting invitations from specific people or with specific words in the subject line, so we have to cobble together a few things to 1) delete the meeting invitation as soon as it arrives, 2) hide the unaccepted/undeclined meeting invitation from Outlook calendar, and 3) for those who synch their Outlook calendar with their Google Calendar, keep these tentative meetings from synching to Google Calendar.

Important caveat: If the person who sent the meeting invitation included a reminder notification, you will still see the notification pop-up for the tentative meeting. One solution? Every Monday morning, pop into your calendar, right-click on each tentative meeting and select “Decline” or “Delete.” If you’ve hidden all of the tentative meetings from view (see below), on the View tab, click the Reset View button. After declining or deleting them all, if you want to hide all new tentative meetings from view again you’ll have to create a new filter.

Doesn’t it feel like it should be way easier than this? Since it’s not, let’s get to it.

Delete the meeting invitation on arrival: Desktop Outlook

To autodelete specific meeting invitations, we need to set up an Outlook rule. We can set up a rule without having the meeting invitation, but since you’re more likely to be motivated to do something about unwanted meeting invitations when they arrive, we’ll build the rule from here.

Right-click on the meeting invitation. From the menu, mouse over Rules, then select Create Rule.

In the rule pop-up, Outlook takes some guesses as to what rule we want to create. In this case, Outlook guessed wrong. Click the Advanced Options button to get to the options we want.

I’m going to create a rule that will apply to meeting invitations from a specific person. In the Rules Wizard pop-up, check the box next to the name of the person, then scroll down and check the box next to “which is a meeting invitation or update.” Remember, I don’t want to delete every message from them, just their meeting invitations. Click Next.

Now we’ll tell Outlook to take the meeting invitations from that person and delete them. Check the box next to “delete it.” Click Next.

In the next pop-up window, choose any exceptions you’d like to make, if any, then click Next. On the last screen, give your rule a name. Check the box next to “Run this rule now…” Make sure the next box is checked: “Turn on this rule.” Click the Finish button.

If you’d like to delete or make any changes to your rule, on the Outlook Home ribbon, click on Rules and then Manage Rules & Alerts. Double-click on the rule you’d like to change, and you’ll see the now-familiar Rules Wizard. Make whatever changes you’d like. Clicking the Finish button will save them.

Delete the meeting invitation on arrival: Web Outlook (Office 365)

If you use both Outlook for the web and desktop outlook, rules created in one version will automatically work in the other. These instructions are for those who may only use Outlook for the web.

Right-click on the meeting invitation, mouse over “Advanced actions,” select “Create rule.”

In the pop-up, click the “More options” link.

Change the name of the rule to something like “For meeting invitations from M.” Click “Add another condition.” From the menu, in the “Message includes” section, select “Type.” Now, to the right of “Type,” you are asked to “Select an option.” Click in that box, and select “Invitation.” Under “Add an action,” select “Delete.” Check the box next to “Run rule now.” Click the “Save” button.

Hide the unaccepted/undeclined meeting invitation from calendar: Desktop Outlook

Even though the meeting invitations that meet the criteria we outlined in our rule are automatically deleted, Outlook calendar still adds them to our calendar as a “Tentative” meeting.

In my mind, it’s not tentative at all. Really, I am not going to attend this meeting. In an ideal world, Outlook would let me delete these calendar additions when I created the rule. I’d even be happy if Outlook let me create a new rule that would do it. But, alas, it is not to be. At least not as of this writing, so we will do the next best thing. We’re going to hide all “tentative” meetings from view. If you leave “tentative” meetings in your Outlook calendar because you use them somehow, do not follow these instructions. Also, be aware that this meeting time will still be blocked off on your calendar. Anyone who is looking for a time to meet with you, your hidden “tentative” meeting times will show as unavailable.

To hide tentative meetings from your Outlook calendar, go to the View ribbon, click on View Settings. In the pop-up, click the Filter button, then on the Advanced tab click on the Field button.

Next, click the Field button, select “All Appointment fields,” then “Meeting Status.” (Whew!)

One last step. Change “Condition” to “not equal to,” and change “Value” to “Not yet responded.” Click OK, and say OK to whatever additional pop-ups Outlook throws at you.

That is it! Your desktop Outlook calendar will show you everything on your calendar except those meeting invitations that you have not responded to.

Again, hiding your tentative meetings from view will not stop the reminder notifications. One option discussed above is to remove the view filter at the beginning of your work week, click and delete each tentative appointment on your calendar, and then apply the filter again. At least that way you’re only dealing with tentative messages once a week instead of dealing with them every time they arrive.

Hide the unaccepted/undeclined meeting invitation from calendar: Web Outlook (Office 365)

Unfortunately, it cannot be done. Not only can you not hide tentative meetings in your web Outlook calendar, the hidden tentative meetings we created in desktop Outlook only apply to desktop Outlook. They do not carry over to web Outlook. More info here. I’m sorry!

Google calendar users: Keep tentative meetings from synching

While I use Outlook calendar for work, I use Google calendar for my personal use. To minimize confusion, I sync these two calendars using the aptly named Outlook Google Calendar Sync. (On their website, do not click any giant start buttons on the screen. Those are ads. Instead, under “Alpha, click the blue Setup.Exe button.

By default, all of those tentative meetings we’ve hidden in Outlook calendar will sync to Google Calendar. Since I’m (still!) not going to those meetings, they don’t need to be on my Google Calendar, either.

In the Outlook Google Calendar Sync settings, on the Outlook tab, check the box next to “Only sync invites I’ve responded to.” Done! All of those hidden tentative meetings will now no long show on my Google Calendar. (To the good people at Microsoft who work on the Outlook teams, please give us a checkbox like this. Thanks!)

I’m back with another excellent James Jones Canvas Tampermonkey script (Jones’s full description). If you don’t yet have Tampermonkey installed in your web browser, visit the Tampermonkey website and click the first download button, not the beta version.

What does the Autofill Maximum Rubric Ratings script do?

Once installed, the script adds a Max button at the top of the rubric in the Pts cell.

Clicking the Max button selects the maximum points cell for all of the criteria in your rubric.

There are a couple ways you can use it. 1) Click Max to start with your rubric at maximum points, and then as you score the assignment, click the other rubric cells as needed. Or 2) Click the other rubric cells as you score, leaving the max scores blank. When you are done scoring, click the Max button. The scores you entered will not change; only the criteria with nothing selected will have max points selected.

Installing the script

You have Tampermonkey installed, yes? If not, install it.

Next, install the script by clicking here.

Log into Canvas. Look at the url. If it starts with <something>.instructure.com, you should be good to go. If it starts with anything else, say, canvas.<something>.edu, then we need to make a little change to the code.

In the top right corner of your browser, click on the Tampermonkey icon, black square with two white circles.

From the menu, select Dashboard. On the Tampermonkey dashboard, select “Rubric Max Ratings.” If this is your first Tampermonkey script, this will be the only one on your dashboard.

After selecting it, you will see the code. In line 6, the code says it will only run on instructure.com pages. Since we need it to run on canvas.<something>.edu pages, we need to add line 6 highlighted below: // @include https://canvas.*.edu/courses/*/gradebook/speed_grader?* then save by clicking FileàSave.

Important cautionary note: Clicking on the little yellow icon next to line 7 tells us that @include is going away in 2023 and that we should use @match instead. For reasons I don’t (yet!) understand, @match does not work for me, but @include does. [If you know why @include does not work for me, please email me at sue@suefrantz.com. Thanks!]

Now, go to Speedgrader and enjoy your new Max button. While you’re there, take a look at the Tampermonkey icon in the top right of your browser. It will now have a 1 on it to confirm that one Tampermonkey script is running on the page.

Outlook notifications are the little popups that appear in the bottom right corner of your screen that scream “PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!” There are a couple very good reasons to turn them off. First, every time they appear, what we are doing is interrupted. If we are in the middle of a thought, our attention goes to the notification, and then we need a few seconds to refocus on what we were doing to begin with. Every. @&%#$^. Time. Consider how many messages you receive in a day. Those seconds add up. The second very good reason to turn them off is if you happen to be sharing your screen in Zoom when a message pops up, your meeting attendees will see the incoming email.

If the message is this, having everyone see it isn’t a bad thing.

But if the message is this (student name deleted):

Or this:

Well, no one else needs to see those. It’s even worse if your Zoom meeting is being recorded.

Turning off Outlook notifications

In the web version of Outlook, click on the gear icon in the top right corner to access settings. Next to “Desktop notifications,” flip the toggle switch from blue to white. If you don’t see it there—or even if you do, click on “View all Outlook settings” at the bottom of this pane.

Click on General

In the desktop version of Outlook, click on File

Go notification-free for a week. If you find yourself getting more work done, then yay for you! If you miss the constant interruptions, go back into settings and turn notifications on again.

As frequent readers of this blog know, I’m a fan of everyone who has the skill to create scripts that make Canvas better. This post will feature another James Jones script (thank you, James!). Like other scripts, this one uses the Tampermonkey add-on for your browser. If you don’t yet have Tampermonkey installed, visit the Tampermonkey website and click the first download button, not the beta version.

What the “add color course border” script does

Since all Canvas courses look the same, it can be hard to tell at first glance which course you are in. The “add color course border” script provides a handy visual cue.

The color is determined by the color of the course card on the dashboard. Click on the 3-dot kabob menu icon. Choose from the default colors by clicking on one and hitting the Apply button.

If you don’t like these color selections, you have about 16 million color options. Be aware that this next bit of knowledge may result in you spending way too much time choosing the absolute best color that captures your feelings for a particular course. Go to html-color.codes. There are a bunch of sites that work in a similar way. They all have advertising. The ads on this one feel the least intrusive. If you’d like to take a look at other sites, use this search term: color hex codes.

On the html-color.codes site, use the slider to pick the hue, and then click and drag the white circle to choose the ideal shade. Once you have the perfect color, copy the 6-character hex code. (“Hex” as in hexadecimal, a base-16 numbering system that uses the numbers 0 to 9 and the letters A to F.)

On the Canvas dashboard course card, enter the hex number and click apply.

Your course card will now be that color. And once you’ve installed the “add course color border” script, your course border will also be that color.

Installing the script

You have Tampermonkey installed, yes? If not, install it.

Next, install the script by clicking here.

Log into Canvas. Look at the url. If it starts with <something>.instructure.com, you should be good to go. If it starts with anything else, say, canvas.<something>.edu, then we need to make a little change to the code.

In the top right corner of your browser, click on the Tampermonkey icon, black square with two white circles.

From the menu, select Dashboard. On the Tampermonkey dashboard, select “Add Color Course Border.” If this is your first Tampermonkey script, this will be the only one on your dashboard.

After selecting it, you will see the code. In line 5, the code says it will only run on instructure.com pages. Since we need it to run on canvas.<something>.edu pages, we need to add line 6 highlighted below: // @include https://canvas.*.edu/courses/* then save by clicking FileàSave.

Important cautionary note: Clicking on the little yellow icon next to line 6 tells us that @include is going away in 2023 and that we should use @match instead. For reasons I don’t (yet!) understand, @match does not work for me, but @include does. [If you know why @include does not work for me, please email me at sue@suefrantz.com. Thanks!]

Now, go to one of your Canvas courses and enjoy your new border. While you’re there, take a look at the Tampermonkey icon in the top right of your browser. It will now have a 1 on it to confirm that one Tampermonkey script is running on the page.

Here are some handy features in the latest Canvas update. Some of these features needs to be turned on by your Canvas administrator. If you don’t see this feature in your instance of Canvas, ask your Canvas administrator to flip the switch.

Apply score to ungraded

While we’ve been able to mark all ungraded work with a default grade by clicking the 3-dot kebab icon for each Canvas gradebook entry, we now have the power to do that across the entire gradebook in one fell swoop. Click the 3-dot kebab icon next to Total in the Canvas gradebook. Use your new-found power only for good.

Default due time

In course settings, we now have a default due time. Our local Canvas administrators have set the default time to 11:59 pm. You can choose other times as a default, but they’re all top of the hour times. If you want one of those, select it, then click the “Update Course Details” button. When you create a new something with a due date, by default, this will be the time that is entered—thus “default due time.” In your assignment/discussion/quiz/page, even though that time pops in as the default, you can change the time in each assignment/discussion/quiz/page to whatever you’d like.

If you want more options than these default times, check out this blog post.

Speedgrader emoji

Canvas has added clickable emoji to the Speedgrader comment box. To choose from the entire emoji library, click the faded smiley face in the bottom right corner of the Speedgrader comment box. In the bottom left corner, choose from thumbs up (whose meaning differs radically by culture; use with caution—or intention; you do you), clapping, and smiley face. While the thumbs up will always be there, the second and third emoji options will change to your most recently used emoji. Yes, your students also have access to these same emoji options.

Students can download all of their coursework, even from concluded courses

Students can download all of their submitted coursework—even from courses from previous terms that are now closed to students, such as assignment files and assignment textbox entries (but not discussion posts or quiz results). The files are the ones the students submitted. Instructor annotations are not included. To download (almost) all of their work, students click on Account and select Settings. On the far right is a “Download Submissions” button. Canvas will download the work into a zip file. The zip file will contain folders for each Canvas course the student has taken, with each course folder containing the work students submitted.

If you have had students who have submitted particularly good work or work that illustrates common errors, you may want to share the work with your current students. Since the students’ names are not on their files—or you have removed them—you think you are sharing the work is anonymous. It may not be, but you can make it so.

Metadata

Most files have metadata—data that is attached to the file but is not visible. For example, PDFs of journal articles contain metadata about the article. PDF managers, like Mendeley and Zotero, pull that metadata into their own databases. Those programs then rearrange the data however the user asks for it.

For example, here is the metadata Zotero pulled from a Media Psychology journal article I downloaded from my college library’s database.

Zotero, then, is happy to rearrange the data it found along with any corrections I made to give me a pretty reference. Here are a couple examples.

APA, 7th

Burkhardt, J., & Lenhard, W. (2022). A meta-analysis on the longitudinal, age-dependent effects of violent video games on aggression. Media Psychology, 25(3), 499–512. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2021.1980729

Chicago, 17^th

Burkhardt, Johanna, and Wolfgang Lenhard. 2022. “A Meta-Analysis on the Longitudinal, Age-Dependent Effects of Violent Video Games on Aggression.” Media Psychology 25 (3): 499–512. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2021.1980729.

Checking documents for and removing metadata (Windows)

First, remove any identifying information from the text of the document. Some students type their name at the top of their documents. Save the file and close it.

In your file folder, right click on the file of interest, and select Properties. Select the Details tab. Here we can see all of the metadata associated with the file.

Below are the property details from a file that a student submitted for an assignment in my course. The student’s name was listed in both the “Authors” and the “Last saved by” fields. If you edited the file and saved it, your name will appear in the “Last saved by” field. Be sure to scroll down. The very last field is “Computer,” and some computers are named with identifying information. For example, the computer I’m typing on right now has a name that begins TBSFRANTS.

To remove the identifying metadata information, click the Remove Properties and Personal Information link at the bottom of the window.

In the next popup, take the easy route and “Create a copy with all possible properties removed.” If you’d rather “Remove the following properties from this file,” select that button, and then check whichever boxes contain content you want to remove, again, being sure to scroll all the way to the bottom.

Lastly, check the file name. Many students include their name when they name their files. Or if your downloading student submissions from your learning management system (LMS), the files may have been renamed according to the LMS conventions. In Canvas, for example, when you download all submissions for an assignment, Canvas names the file as <student’s last name><student’s first name><LATE (if the submission was late><long number><original name of the file>.

Ethical and legal considerations

Is it legally okay to share anonymized student work? Your institution may have a policy about this. For example, Rutgers has a policy: “”Students typically will own the copyright to works created as a requirement of their coursework, degree, or certificate program. The university, however, retains the right to use student works for pedagogical, scholarly, and administrative purposes.” To me, a pedagogical purpose includes being able to share anonymized examples of student work with other students as illustrations of both good and less good work.

From a FERPA standpoint, student records may not be shared. Is student coursework, though, considered a student record? Apparently, that depends on how your institution defines student record. (Read more about this from the Online Learning Consortium.)

While I am many things, I am most assuredly not a copyright or educational rights attorney. If you have legal questions regarding sharing student work, please consult with your institution’s legal team.

If your institution does not have a policy, consider including a statement in your course syllabus regarding your intentions to share anonymized student work with future students as a pedagogical tool. It seems only sporting—ethical even—to give students fair warning. And to give students an opportunity to opt out.

Also consider asking for student permission up front. Here is a sample form. If you’d like all students to complete the form at the beginning of a course, make it, say, a three-point assignment. If you do, be sure to include the option of “No, I do not grant permission to share my work.” Assure students they can change their minds later by resubmitting the form.

I wish it would have occurred to someone to call whiteboards “snowboards.” That sounds way more fun.

Zoom has had a rudimentary whiteboard as part of its Screenshare menu. For those of you who find that that whiteboard serves your purposes, keep using it.

For those of you have wished that the Zoom whiteboard had a little more functionality, check out the new Zoom whiteboards.

In your Zoom meeting room, you can find the new Whiteboards button in the bottom toolbar.

You can also access your whiteboards—and create new ones—by logging into the Zoom.us website. Have you created a whiteboard you want to use as a template? Click the 3-dot kabob icon on the whiteboard you want to duplicate, and select “Duplicate.”

After opening a whiteboard in your Zoom meeting, use the toolbar on the left to draw or type. Click the icon at the very bottom of this toolbar to add an additional 11 pages for a total of 12. From this same icon, you can delete pages or completely erase a page. Click the 3-dot kabob menu icon in the top right to export your whiteboard as an image file (png) or pdf. Want collaborators (co-owners, editors, commenters, or just viewers)? Click the blue Share button. Want to change the size of the webcam videos? Click and drag the horizontal bars on the webcam/whiteboard divider. (Speaking of webcams, do you like my ultra-serious thinking face?) To close the whiteboard, click on the bright red “Close Whiteboard” button at the top of the screen. It took me way too long to find it. I was looking for an X to click on.

Happy snowboarding!

Zoom released its latest update today, Monday, April 18, 2022. Below, I’ve listed some of the features that I find particularly useful. You can find the full list here. This update is a manual download. The easiest way to get it is to visit the Zoom download page and click the Download button. The installer will download to your computer’s download folder. Run the installer to get the updated version of Zoom.

Polls/Quizzes: New Central Library

For those who use polls/quizzes, you know that the questions you had for your personal meeting room were separate from the questions you had for your other meeting rooms. Good news. When you log into your Zoom.us account, you can create poll/quizzes that will be accessible from either type of Zoom room. As of this writing, only 10 questions can be stored in this central library.

Breakout Rooms: View Activity

For those who use breakout rooms, you can now get a sense of how much is happening in those rooms. In this screenshot, we can see who has their mic and webcams on. When someone is speaking, as the second person is in the screenshot below, the dark bar of their mic bounces up and down.

Here, you can see me screensharing in a breakout room.

This Zoom update was also supposed to show emojis. In our testing, no emojis appeared next to the participant names.

To turn on this feature, log into Zoom.us. Click on Settings, then “In Meeting (Advanced).” Under “Breakout room,” check the box next to “Allow host to view activity statuses…” While you are here, check the box above it, too, if you haven’t already: “Allow host to create, rename, and delete breakout rooms when rooms are open”—not because it’s needed for this feature, but because it’s a handy option to have. Click “Save.” (As I discovered in testing, if you don’t click the save button, the changes to your settings will not be saved. Who knew?)

Enhanced Meeting Reactions

When participants select a meeting reaction emoji, it will appear both in the top left corner of their video screen and at the bottom of their zoom screen. If a participant has turned off self-view (webcam is on, but they cannot see their video), they will still see their selected emoji at the bottom of their Zoom screen.

Chat Preview: Toggle On/Off

If you have the chat window turned off, chat messages will pop up on the bottom of your screen as a chat preview.

When presenting, the chat view can be pretty distracting. We can now quickly toggle it on/off by clicking the up arrow next to “Chat.” Clicking on “Show Chat Previews” will make both the checkmark and chat previews disappear. Click it again to make the previews reappear.

Gesture Recognition: Saving the Best for Last

When gesture recognition is turned on, Zoom will recognize your upraised palm as a hand raise. A little hand raise icon at the bottom of your screen will appear, and the outer circle will cycle from white to blue in about 4 seconds.

The hand raise emoji will appear just as if you had selected it from the emoji menu. You will also get the “lower hand” button at the bottom of the screen.

Participants who have their emoji hand-raise icons activated will have their videos pop to the top left corner of gallery view.

Even with the animal avatars, even though the palm (or hoof in this case) is not displayed, Zoom still detects the hand raise.

The other hand gesture Zoom recognizes (as of this Zoom update) is the thumbs up. There is no timer on the thumbs up gesture. The emoji appears as soon as Zoom detects the raised thumb. This also works with the animal avatars. Keep in mind that the meaning of the thumbs up sign varies by culture. In some locations—such as parts of the Middle East and West Africa—it’s equivalent to giving someone the middle finger. Since I know some of you were hoping for the middle finger gesture, you have my permission to use the thumbs-up gesture with either connotation.

Anyone who wants this kind of power, they need to turn it on. If you’d like your students to use this, they, too, need to turn it on. Run Zoom. Click on the up arrow next to “Stop Video,” and click on “Video Settings.”

In the Settings window, click on “General” (directly above “Video”). Scroll to the bottom. Right below the skin tone menu, click the box next to “Activate the following emojis based on hand gesture recognition ” (In our testing, even after the update, some users did not have this option. We are not sure why. Other users did not have the emoji package installed. On this settings page, they were given the option to install it. After installing the package and clicking the box, their hand gesture recognition was enabled.)

As of this writing, Zoom for computers and supported iPads have hand gesture recognition. Nothing yet for Android or iPhones.

I’ve written before about using Tampermonkey scripts for adding functionality to Canvas. If you’re not familiar with Tampermonkey scripts for Canvas, please read that post first. I have another one for my fellow intrepid Canvas users. This one comes from Ben Fisher of Crean Lutheran High School, known as fisher1 in the Canvas Community forums. Read his post here.

What the “Set Canvas Default Due Times” script does

Everywhere you can add a time for when an assignment, quiz, or discussion is due, you will have time buttons to choose from. Yes, you can decide what those times are. All of my course stuff is due at 11:59pm, so that will be the only button I have. However, I’ve edited the script to show you these three times as an example.

After clicking a time button, the calendar will appear with today’s date highlighted. Choose the date you want. The due date and time will be set. Click the Save button as you normally do. Done!

Get the script

If you have Tampermonkey installed, visit this website, and click the Install button. If you don’t yet have Tampermonkey, start with my initial blog post on using Tampermonkey with Canvas.

Editing the script

Let’s start by setting the times that will appear on the buttons.

Click on the Tampermonkey icon in your browser’s add-on toolbar.

Select Dashboard. From the list of scripts, select Canvas Default Due Times. (If this is the first script you’ve added, it will be the only one you see.)

In the script, look for the line that begins with “const defaultTimes” – this is the line that contains the code for the button times. Times are according to a 24-hour clock. Change the times to the ones you want. Be sure to keep the apostrophes and the commas exactly where they are. Change only the numbers.

In my courses, since everything is due at 11:59pm, this is what my line of code looks like. You do you.

There is one more thing we need to check on. [Ben Fisher, who wrote the code, amended the file to include the lines below, so need to add them. Thanks, Ben!]

Log into Canvas and look at the url in your browser’s address bar. If it starts with <institution name>.instructure.com, you’re good to go. Just click File and Save.

If your Canvas address starts with canvas.<institution name>.edu, then we have to do one more thing.

Take a look at lines 6 through 14. When you use a Tampermonkey script, the script needs to tell Tampermonkey which websites the script applies to. The asterisk (*) means that there can be any text there. We can see that the script will run at institutions that use <institution name>.instructure.com.

My college, though, uses this address: canvas.<institution name>.edu. The script doesn’t include that kind of address, so Tampermonkey won’t know to run, so we need to add some lines of code so that Tampermonkey runs on our Canvas pages.

Download this text file. Copy and paste the lines of code. You can either replace all of the existing instructure.com lines, or just add the canvas.*.edu lines after.

Click File and Save. Done!

Important note

Tampermonkey scripts are browser-dependent, meaning they only run in browsers where they are installed. If you use Canvas on multiple computers, you will need to install Tampermonkey and your Canvas scripts on all of those computers/browsers.

You can export all of your Tampermonkey scripts by going to the Tampermonkey Dashboard, clicking the box in the top left corner to select all, choosing Export from the dropdown menu, and clicking Start.

Very quickly, all of your scripts will appear in your downloads folder as a zip file.

Now go to the browser—on the same computer or a different computer—where you want to run the scripts. Install Tampermonkey there if you haven’t already. Click on the Tampermonkey icon in that browser. Select the Utilities tab. In the “Import from file” section, click choose file and select your downloaded zip file. Follow any online instructions. And… done!