New features are available in the Announcements and Discussions tools that can be enabled (or disabled) in a Canvas course by those with the teacher or course administrator role.

Warning: The new features provided by the Canvas supplier (Instructure) are currently in a beta format. That means that they are currently under development. If you experience any errors or unexpected behaviour with the beta version, please take a screenshot and send it with a description of what happened to canvas@it.ox.ac.uk. Thank you.

Benefits

The interface has been improved in the following ways:

By default, the latest posts appear at the top instead of at the bottom of the list.
There is a 'Sort' option – you can elect to sort posts according to 'Newest' or 'Oldest'.
The role of the author of the posts appears as a label, e.g. 'Author' 'Teacher'.

Anonymous discussions can now be enabled (when creating a new discussion).
You can easily enable or disable the new version, according to your preferences.

Risks

Since the new features are still in a beta version (under the control of the Canvas suppliers, Instructure), some unexpected behaviour may occur.
All latest changes made by Instructure will automatically appear in updated versions of the new interface, without prior warning.

How to enable (or disable) the new (beta) version

In your Canvas course, click on Settings. Select the Feature Previews tab at the top. Use the toggle switch on the right hand side to either enable or disable the new version of Discussions and Announcements:

If you have enabled the new features (as described above) and decide that you prefer the previous version of the tools, you can always revert by switching it off using the same toggle option.