Communicating in Canvas
Options for Communicating with Students in Canvas
(Click on the links to view Instructure's online Canvas documentation.)
Announcements
Announcements help you reach a large number of students at once and are useful when you want to:
- Point students to internal and external resources in the form of written content/attachments or even audio/video comments.
- Remind students about upcoming deadlines.
- Announce important events that may be of interest to your students.
- Feed a custom RSS feed related to the topic of the course to your students.
Discussions
Discussions within Canvas provide an integrated system for you and your students to start and contribute to discussion topics. Discussions can also be created as an assignment for grading purposes and can be integrated with the Canvas Gradebook.
Use Discussions to:
- Follow-up on a conversation or questions that began in a face-to-face classroom.
- Test student understanding about a discussion/conversation made in class.
- Allow students to debate over ideas presented in class amongst themselves, while still in a supervised setting.
- Use student input on the discussion boards to enhance and improve the effectiveness of class sessions.
Comments/Feedback
Canvas provides a variety of options for leaving feedback for students. See also Assessment and Grading Tools.
How do I leave comments for students in the Gradebook?
- If you want to leave simple feedback for your students, you can leave a text comment directly in the Gradebook. Gradebook comments will be placed within the Discussion portion of Speedgrader™.
How do I add a comment to an assignment using the SpeedGrader™ app on my iPad?
- You can leave text, audio, or video comments on student assignments in SpeedGrader™.
How do I use free-form comments instead of ratings in a Rubric?
- When modifying a rubric, you can enable free-form comments for each criterion in the rubric.
How do I attach a media comment to my message?
- You can record or upload video and audio files as part of your Conversations messages.
Conferences
Conferences can be used primarily for conducting virtual lectures and virtual office hours. You can use conferences to conduct presentations to a large online audience using webcams, audio, and desktop sharing abilities. Conferences also allow you to conduct a live chat session with the audience present in the conference room. Conference rooms can also be used by students to conduct group study sessions.
Use Conferences to:
- Conduct a live lecture or session to the students that can't be onsite.
- Connect with your students for online office hours or special study sessions.
- Use the meeting room for one-on-one sessions with students in a virtual environment.
- Invite special guests to your classroom by adding them as a student or observer to your course.
Related pages
Canvas Guide Topics
- Canvas Guide
- Canvas at Evergreen
- Technical Requirements
- Designing Your Canvas Course
- Canvas Site Templates
- Enrollment Information for Canvas
- Communication Tools
- Assignments and Quizzes
- Assessment and Grading Tools
