Hi Kelley,
The specific reason, is that sometimes we Professors have to plan for the future, or work out of order, or just want to try to get ahead on something. Since Canvas alerts students to everything we do (without letting us know that it is notifying them), it creates confusion for them.
I actually like being in charge of communicating with my students. It lets me be the messenger, so that I can set the tone and explain and provide context. Even develop community amongst. my class. Canvas notifications takes that power away from me.
It also creates so much noise in student inboxes, that it drowns me out. Yes, I know that students can turn off notifications, but notifications should never have been sent without my request! I am (supposedly) in charge of this course.
Constantly sending student notifications requires that I be perfect, and I am not perfect. For example:
- I accidentally set a due date in the past when creating an assignment. Notification to every student that they got a 0 on the assignment.
- I wanted to modify which student was doing peer review for which student. Ended up sending 5 emails to each student with broken links, because I didn't know that emails were automatically generated.
- Had settings wrong on a quiz (exam), it auto grades the multiple choice section and tells students they got 30/100.
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