[ARCHIVED] Ashford Cafe

[maureen_duttond]

How do I access the Ashford Cafe?

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[kona]

 @maureen_duttond , greetings and welcome to the global community of all Canvas users! I'm not familiar with what the Ashford Cafe is, so my guess is this is something specific for your school. My recommendation is to ask your Instructor and see if they are able to help. 

Kona

[James · Accepted solution]

 @maureen_duttond  

Here's a blog post from Ashford University in April 2016 about what the Ashford Café is: Building a Sense of Community for Online Learners. The only thing it says about getting to it is that it is accessible from the online classroom. Another blog post from December 2018 just tells students to visit the Ashford Café without telling them how: Instructor to Student: Get to Know Me. A blog post from February 2018 tells students to visit the Ashford Café in your classrooms: 3 Questions for Tanisha Neal | Ashford Connections.

All of that makes it sound like there should be a link inside your course to the Ashford Café.

There is another page with a video about Using the Ashford Café, from 2014, but it's been archived with a message that says "Because of the transition to Canvas, this video no longer exists." I don't know if that's because the videos now reside inside Canvas or if Canvas obsoleted the Ashford Café. That video still links to the old video on Kaltura, but that doesn't tell you how to access it or use it.

Most of the references to the Café are from years ago (2013-2018) and it seems to be a pretty prevalent thing that they just think people should know how to get to. On the other hand, the absence of information about it on the web might suggest that it is no longer in use. If that's the case, it might also be that your instructor hasn't updated their syllabus to reflect that. Maybe it stopped being a thing when Ashford switched to Canvas?

What  @kona  wrote is correct. The help link you clicked inside Canvas took you to the wrong group of people. We're an international group of users of the Canvas learning management system and we can help with issues related to using the Canvas software. However, we don't have insight into your specific institution. We don't have access to your course to see if there is a link there to the Ashford Café. There might be someone with knowledge about Ashford in the Canvas Community, but there's no guarantee that they will see this message. It would be much better and faster to contact someone at Ashford University to help.

There's another blog post from January 2020 for the New Student Resource Guide: What You Need to Know. It doesn't mention the Café, but it does provide other good information about connecting with other students (the purpose of the Café) and it includes some contact numbers.