Communicate and Collaborate
An overview
Canvas provides instructors and students with a variety of communication tools. Instructors can communicate with students in one of three ways:
1. Announcements: Announcements are a great way to send your entire class timely, public information. Each student in the course receives an email whenever the Announcements are made. As examples, here is a list of a few cases:
- If you need to update a reading assignment and want to provide the link to students when they log into your course.
- Changes to a due date or the class schedule.
- Explanation of content-related information.
Read the article, "What are announcements?" Links to an external site. to learn more about communicating with your students about course activities.
2. Discussions: Discussions are similar to forums or message boards, except they are solely open to course participants.
3. Inbox: The Inbox, also known as chats or messages, is a messaging tool that is used instead of email to connect with your students. It functions similarly to email. You can send messages to the entire class, a group of students, or a single student using the Inbox. Within your course, Inbox is ideal for private communication. It allows you to communicate with everyone in your classes without having to deal with emails or leaving Canvas. As examples, here is a list of a few use cases:
- If you need to email a specific student.
- If you wish to communicate with users of a specific course. For more information, read the article, "
- If you want to review and respond to comments on assignment submissions. For more information, read the article, "How do I reply to submission comments in the Inbox as an instructor?" Links to an external site.
4. Calendar: Keeping track of all of the assignments scheduled throughout the semester is one of the issues that both students and instructors face. Courses are taught by different instructors, and students are enrolled in multiple courses. Every course has its own set of deadlines for completing tasks. The Calendar helps to keep everyone on track and up to date
Other options
With addition to the features stated above, Canvas offers the following options to aid in course discussion and engagement:
- Feedback: You can offer feedback for your students on their assignment submissions using Canvas. Text, an associated file, video, or audio can all be used. See How do I leave comments on assignments for students Links to an external site. for more details.
- Collaborations: Canvas also allows numerous people to collaborate on the same document at the same time. Collaborative papers are preserved in real-time, which means that any changes made by any of the users are immediately accessible to everyone. See Canvas Instructor Guide: Collaborations Links to an external site. for further details.
- Notifications: Canvas has various preset notification choices that you can customize for your courses (including text, email).
Notifications are sent to the contact methods you choose in your account for Canvas. You can, however, override the default settings by customizing your notification options. These options only apply to you; they have no bearing on how other users receive course updates. View the Canvas Notifications PDF Links to an external site. to learn more about each notification, its default settings, and notification triggers. See the Canvas Guide: How do I set my notification options Links to an external site. for more details.
Let's take a look at each of the options above one by one in the pages that follow. Click "Next".