Do you use Slack,Pronto,What's App, etc within Canvas?

[canvas-help]

Hello All, 

Have you integrated or are you using apps such as Slack, Pronto or What's App in your courses?  If so, we would love to hear how you are using it, and has it increased student and/or faculty experience? How satisfied are you with it? What are the issues you have encountered?  Any recommendations?

Thank in advance for sharing your experience!

[jeremyt]

We haven't integrated any of those within Canvas yet. 

But sure would be AMAZING if there were a Canvas Admin Slack group for us Canvas Admins.  We can interact in real-time with our peers (not Instructure Support) to be able to assist each-other and socialize....which will only grow the community IMO.   

I created my own Slack group for Canvas Admins and was going to spam everyone with the Slack group name...but @the last minute thought it would be best if Instructure or someone else managed the group.  Instructure make this happen!  It would sure be life-changing for a lot of us Canvas Admins!  Oh and my apologies if I hijacked the thread with my response.

Thanks,
Jeremy

College of the Sequoias

[scottdennis]

Hey Jeremy,
First off; kudos to you for being forward thinking and innovative. I can see where a real time communication venue for you and your Canvas admin peers could be really helpful when you are collaborating and trying to work through a problem. There are various groups around the world who employ various real time chat solutions to collaborate around setting up regional meet ups and to support each other in general. You are probably aware of the group (facilitated by the amazing and talented Kristin Lundstrum) that gets together real time to work through the ramifications of new Canvas releases.

That all being said, over the years we have carefully considered whether it would make sense for us to create and support an official Canvas Community chat option. There are several good reasons why we have decided not to but one of them is a current technology limit in that we don't have a way for people to search in the community to find all the official resources, community created content AND chat transcripts all in one search result. Questions and answers and posted solutions and work arounds that people add to the community serve the purpose of hopefully helping the people who are communicating with each other at the time but they also add to a knowledge base for those who come along later, looking for answers to similar questions and challenges.

To address the original question from eCornell; I haven't seen or heard of a slack/Canvas integration but I can see where that could potentially be really useful.

[jeremyt]

Hi Scott,

Thank you for your response.  This need isn't going to go away for us....So are you telling me my only option is to go "rogue" and spam everyone with my own personally created Canvas Admin Slack group?   

Thanks,
Jeremy

[scottdennis]

Hey Jeremy,

Nope, I'm definitely not telling you that you only have one option, only that there is one option you don't have... 

If you are going to create a live chat option and encourage Canvas admins to use it to communicate with each other I would recommend that you not spam people with direct message either here in the community or outside of it but instead post about it in the admin group or where you think it will be seen by the right people - maybe share it into other areas as well.  You might follow the example of the release notes chats group or, heck, even coordinate other real time meetups with them and any others interested.  If you do that, you could advertise them via CanvasLIVE as well.

[jeremyt]

When I said "spam" I meant the routes you're stating above. lol  I'd never send unsolicited emails out to anyone, let alone my professional peers.  

[scottdennis]

Good deal.  I hope this idea works would well for you.

[jeremyt]

Hey Scott, will you join the Slack channel if I post it?

[scottdennis]

Hey Jeremy,

Sorry for the delay in responding...   Sure, I'd be happy to.  I can't commit to actively monitoring it but I'd be happy to stop in from time to time.

[kmauro]

have you thought about using Remind?  My school licenses the paid version of Remind and we are testing their integration with Canvas.  So far we are really happy with the texting capabilities in the LMS.

Remind101 - Member | Instructure Partner Directory 

Here is another document that I found regarding Remind + Canvas. http://bit.ly/rmdcanvas