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Getting Others Connected

Want to connect with those enrolled? Canvas offers a few hassle-free ways to communicate with those in your classes!

Announcements are a way to communicate with learners about course activities and other course-related topics. When an announcement is published, Canvas notifying students according to their preferred Notification Preference.

Use Announcements to:

  • Remind learners what they need to accomplish to stay on track.

  • Provide resources.

  • Leave a message for the entire class with video or audio comments.

  • Celebrate successes and important events.

  • Pull in content via an external app.

The Canvas Inbox functions similar to email. Messages in the Inbox are referred to as Conversations. The messaging system in Canvas makes it easy to manage conversations by course, by section, by group and/or by learner without having to know their email address.

Feature of Inbox include:

  • Sending messages to an entire course, just a section, or a learner without needing email addresses.

  • When a learner emails, the inbox will indicate exactly which course he/she/they are enrolled in. 

  • Conversations are threaded and kept organized by name.

  • Seeing the profile pictures of learners if available when reading messages.

  • Messages can be written in text or be recorded as a video or audio directly from the new message interface.

  • All messages sent via the Gradebook will be archived in the Inbox.

  • All comments made on assignments through the SpeedGrader will be archived in the Inbox.

  • All discussion replies made in course or group discussions will show up in the Inbox.

Discussions can be created as an assignment for grading purposes or remain ungraded.

Features of Discussions are:

  • Set a discussion to 'graded'  to enable the options for creating an assignment. 

  • In the Discussion prompt, use the Rich Text Editor to include links to websites, record or upload videos, insert content from external apps such as Khan Academy or CK-12, etc. Use the Content Selector to includes links to other pages in the course, modules, files, or embed an image. 

  • Discussions can be threaded or focused. Use a Threaded Discussion for multiple posts and related comments. One or more discussion leaders post a message and multiple learners comment on it with the freedom to create any number of related discussion topics and comments.

  • A peer review discussion enables learners to provide feedback on other's replies to a class discussion. Peer reviews are a tool that allows communication between students and can help students master the concepts of a course and learn from each other. Peer reviews can only be added to a graded discussion.

  • There is the ability to edit or delete Discussion posts within the course. This setting helps moderate the course and remove any inappropriate or otherwise unwanted posts.

  • By default, instructors will automatically be subscribed to all discussion threads created in the course and be notified via email when new comments are posted to the topic. Learners are also automatically subscribed to a discussion once they have submitted a response. 

  • By default, as instructors read new Discussion posts, Canvas will mark them as read. Instructors can manually mark each post back to a read or unread state.

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