[ARCHIVED] Student Notifications Regarding Incomplete Modules

[AdrienneScott]

I work for an institution that trains teachers on using our product.  We are creating a course with 5 modules and would like to send users an automatic notification that reminds them to complete their incomplete modules.  Is it possible and how.  

[kmeeusen · Accepted solution]

Hi @AdrienneScott 

Having trained teachers for many years, and having been a teacher for a great many more, I understand how difficult it can sometimes be to keep teachers on-task for any task that is not in their own classrooms!

Canvas does not have an automated solution, but you could create a new Idea Conversation for this functionality in this community.

• How do idea conversations work in the Canvas Community?
• How do I create a new idea conversation in the Canvas Community?

Lacking an automated solution, this is how I would do it and have done it, many times...........

• Create an end-of-module quiz, and use this quiz as an opportunity for the learners to self-assess how well they did on the module and provide you with important information on how well the learning materials and activities in the module worked. I ask one question for each learning objective for the module, and ask the learner to rate their understanding or achievement of the objective as a Likert-scale rating.
• The quiz is always available for the convenience of my more rapid learners.
• I set the module to require completion of the quiz,
• Just before the expected end of the anticipated or required end time of the module (I don't know if your course is date/time delineated), use the "Message students who...." feature of the gradebook to remind learners to complete the module. How do I send a message to students using the gradebook?
• Rinse and repeat daily until everybody has completed the module, or the class has moved on!

I hope this helps,

Kelley

[AdrienneScott]

Hello, 

Thank you so much for this suggestion. I've used the "Message Students Who" option previously for small sections of 30-40 students.  I've not done this for 10k learners. I think it will work! I'll just have to set a reminder to do this on the 4th week of the 6 week course duration. We already have module quizzes for each module so that should work as well.

Thank you for the advise. 

[LowellBieber]

Hi @AdrienneScott, 

As mentioned, there's unfortunately not a native and automated solution that gets this done. Canvas was previously pursuing a project called "Nudges" that did exactly this, however, it has since been sidelined. It's true, setting reminders yourself to message students is one workaround, although that's really just a band-aid and requires more work from you.

There is an external tool that does exactly this that can be easily implemented. Boost Education sends automated educative nudges for students who haven't yet turned in assignments. The product was developed out of research at Indiana University. The research actually proved that automated nudges were more effective than teacher's announcement notifications at getting students to turn in assignments and earn higher grades. That's all in addition to saving you the hassle of having to send out those reminders. 

I'm actually on the team here at Boost. I'd love to talk to you about getting Boost quickly up and running for free at your institution in time for this fall. We're a Instructure Partner and you can view our partner listing right here. That partner page has my email so if you're interested in learning more, please don't hesitate to reach out! I'd be happy to discuss how else Boost can make both teacher's and student's lives much easier while enabling student success.