By Jodi McFarland

You can use the New Rich Content Editor (New RCE) to add and format text and other content throughout Announcements, Assignments, Discussions, Quizzes, and the Syllabus. The New RCE reflects changes that increase the tool’s functionality and includes new feature options that improves the user experience across Canvas courses. The New RCE will be available as a feature option in April 2020 and will become the standard rich content editor across Canvas on May 6th for the summer semester.

How is the New Rich Content Editor Different?

107 - New RCE from Instructure Canvas Community on Vimeo.

The toolbar will be condensed and include some new and enhanced features. A full list of features of the New Rich Content Editor is available on Canvas’s New Rich Content Editor release notes.

The following enhancements are included with this feature update:

• The Rich Content Editor expands to the full width of the browser.
• The toolbar includes a condensed, more intuitive look.
• Toolbar menus are grouped by common icons and interactions.
• The content sidebar only displays when linking to other parts of Canvas, accessing Canvas files, or accessing uploaded media.
• Image and media additions include drag and drop; images include an Unsplash search and content auto-scaling.
• The Keyboard shortcut, Accessibility Checker, and HTML Editor icons have been moved to the bottom of the editor next to the word count. Additionally, the New RCE window can be resized using the Move handle below the window..

Repositioned Features

Note for users of screen readers: letters in parentheses in the instructions below refer to corresponding areas on example images. If you have any questions about these instructions, contact eLearning for assistance.

All the items that were on the right-hand side of the screen have been split into the different icons listed below (see figure 1). There are other repositioned features as well:

1. External Links/Course Links
2. Upload Image/Course Images
3. Record Media/Course Media
4. Upload Document/Course Documents
5. External Apps: Access to Embed Kaltura Media, NBC Learn Video Library, Office 365, UAB Libraries
   1. External Apps window: Embed Kaltura Media (see figure 2)
6. Accessibility Checker
7. HTML/Text Editor: Previously on the top right has been moved to the bottom right.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Learn More

• For more information: View the New RCE Release Notes
• For eLearning Training and Support: Request a Training Session