[ARCHIVED] Message to multiple courses

[erika_malmkvist]

How does a teacher send a message to more than one course at the same time? Example if he/she is sick and wants to tell all her students that day that the classes are cancelled.

Is there a way for me as Admin to enable this for the teachers at our institution?

Best Reagards 

Erika

[kblack · Accepted solution]

Hi  @erika_malmkvist  - Unfortunately there is not a way to do this, even administratively by changing certain teacher permissions.  The only thing an administrator can do, of course, is put a notification on ALL Canvas dashboards...which you obviously do not want to do, either, in this case.

The only thing I can do is encourage you to vote up and comment upon this Feature Idea:  https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/4717-email-message-multiple-classes-at-one-time .

Hope this helps a bit, Erika.

[erika_malmkvist]

That is really STUPID! How hard can it be to fix this. Canvas id the only platfform we use to communicate with the students. And the INBOX-feature sucks. It is way to limited. One should be able to commuincate as one like and  students and teachers should be able to contact one another easily- It should work as an e-mail function.

[kblack]

Hi again  @erika_malmkvist  - While I can understand your frustration--and I'm a fellow user like you--despite Canvas calling the function the Inbox on the global navigation bar on the left, they otherwise are very careful to not refer to it as email.  In fact, in the instructor documentation covering that navigation bar as well as in one's Notification settings, it is referred to as "Conversations."  I remind my own faculty that it is therefore not as 100% foolproof as email.  I suspect one big reason for this is that students can disable receiving those notifications via Conversations very easily when editing their own notification preferences. 

I do not know all of the reasoning and history behind this, but this is important to remember.  On that very same feature idea that I linked to earlier, you may want to read over the reply that a man I respect very much in this Community,  @kmeeusen  has.  Kelley has used similar wording in other replies within this Community, and I find myself looking his wording up quite frequently when trying to explain this feature to my own faculty.

[erika_malmkvist]

Well I get the point that it isn’t a proper e-Mail. The thing is that english isn’t my native language and sometimes explaining and making a point make me use the wrong phrases and words to make sure that I’m understod. Still I would like to outbox more than one course at the same time.

Skickat från min iPhone

12 feb. 2020 kl. 16:12 skrev Ken Black <instructure@jiveon.com>:

Canvas LMS Community <https://community.canvaslms.com/?et=notification.mention>

You have been mentioned

by Ken Black<https://community.canvaslms.com/people/kblack@dom.edu?et=notification.mention> in Re: Message to multiple courses in Canvas LMS Community - View Ken Black's reference to you<https://community.canvaslms.com/message/176959-re-message-to-multiple-courses?commentID=176959&et=notification.mention#comment-176959>

[kmeeusen]

Thank you,  @kblack  !

I would like to add that two of the colleges I teach for create email distribution lists for each course in their catalog. As a teacher, I simply type the course ID in the address line, and it loads that distribution list. At both colleges, all students are provided a school email address on enrollment and are required to use them - for example, all financial aid information is distributed via email.  Money is a great motivator!

I would recommend that any teacher needing this capability talk to their IT folks, and see if this is an option; and if not, then lobby for it.

Kelley

[erika_malmkvist]

But I can do it as an administrator. Why can't our Instructors have the same feature?

[Kevin_W]

A relatively new feature that helps bridge this gap is the 'Copy to' Feature. This makes it simple to share an announcement (and other course items to additional courses).

[JoshFrederick]

I love how 90% of the "How do I do X?" questions I have about Canvas are "You can't."

Can we get an option to call this "email" so we can actually send it to multiple courses?  Surely that's not some insurmountable task. 

[Chris_Hofer]

@JoshFrederick ...

One of the reasons, IMHO, that the Canvas Inbox is not called "e-mail" is because it does not function exactly the same as a normal e-mail inbox.  For example, in the Canvas Inbox, you cannot send messages to your friends and family who are not also enrolled in the same courses that you are.  Similarly, your friends can family cannot send you e-mail messages that you receive via the Canvas Inbox.  The messages you send/receive via the Canvas Inbox are meant for course activity only.  But, you can choose to receive notifications of those messages by managing your own notification settings within Canvas.  So, naming the Canvas Inbox as "e-mail" could get quite confusing for people...assuming that it is something that it is not.

I would encourage you, if you haven't yet done so, to participate in the conversation Feature Idea happening over at Email (message) multiple classes at one time - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com) ... which Ken Black has referenced in his earlier response.  As you can see from this Feature Idea, there's been quite a bit of interest in having this capability in Canvas.  So, you never know, Instructure (the company that makes Canvas) may develop something in the future.  They do read those comments and use cases, so your feedback would be valuable if you wanted to post a comment there!

Surely that's not some insurmountable task. 

---

I get that...I really do.  I've submitted Feature Ideas myself that I'd love to see implemented in Canvas, but they still haven't been developed.  Yet, at the same time, I have had a handful of Feature Ideas developed that I thought would never see the light of day.  Here is a Guide that explains more about the development process ... especially when we think that our ideas may seem easy to implement:

What is the feature development process for Instru... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

I know this may not be the solution you are looking for, but I hope it helps to explain things a bit.  Take care...