Instructure's Discussions/Announcements Redesign is an ongoing project with regular updates. Instructors who enable the Discussions/Announcements Redesign feature in their course can follow the release change log here. Currently most new features are specific to discussions.

The main feature options currently available in the Discussions/Announcements Redesign are:

Anonymous discussions (instructors can enable this on a per discussion basis; instructors can also choose whether or not students can create anonymous discussions)
Reply reporting for inappropriate, offensive and/or abusive comments (instructors can choose to enable this feature for students)
@ mentions
Reply sidebar
Sorting posts by oldest or newest replies

Enabling Discussions/Announcements Redesign

Click on Settings at the bottom of the left hang navigation panel in a Canvas course
In the top bar, click Feature options
Enable Discussions/Announcements Redesign

Once enabled, go to the Discussions tab and click on the gear icon to select preferred student settings.

Anonymous Discussions

The option for anonymity displays when creating a new discussion for a course. By default this option is set to off.

PLEASE NOTE:

When anonymity is turned on for a discussion, grading and groups are not supported.
Users with a instructor, TA, or designer role in the course will never be anonymous.
Student posts will be anonymous to everyone in the course, including instructors and TA's.

When anonymity is turned on for a discussion, student names and profile pictures are hidden from other course members, including teachers.

Sorting, Reply Sidebar, Reporting, @mentions

Sorting: Click on the sort button at the top of the discussion to sort by oldest or newest reply.
Reply sidebar: A discussion reply can support up to one additional reply. When a reply includes additional replies, the number of replies is displayed, as well as the number of unread replies (specific to the user viewing the reply). All replies are nested together and displayed in a sidebar. Replying to a reply in the sidebar is called a quote.
Reporting: To report a reply, click on the three dots next to the reply and select report.
- When a reply is reported by a user, the user must indicate why the reply is being reported (inappropriate, offensive and/or abusive, or Other). Reporting a reply cannot be undone. Once a reply has been reported, the settings menu for the discussion will display to other users as reported and cannot be selected again.
- To be notified of reported replies, teachers can enable the Discussions Reported Reply notification in their account- or course-level notifications page. Email notifications include a direct link to the reply that has been reported.
- Reporting a reply does not hide the reply; all replies are still visible to all users. However, teachers can choose to edit or delete the reported reply.

To tag someone in a post, use the @ symbol and select the person from the dropdown. For large classes, start typing the name of the person to filter the list. @ mentions are not supported in anonymous discussions.