[Gradebook] Generate Automatic Messages to students who do not submit work

[lisa_braun]

I have found the "message students who..." function in gradebook very effective to nudging students to complete assignments. I suggest an option that, when you create the assignment, you can automatically choose to have the message sent to students after the turn in deadline has passed. I compare it to a "out of office" email that you might send to your colleagues. This personalized message will allow teachers to effectively use the message system and encourage student completion of work in a timely manner, without additional messages from the teacher. 

[tedcowan]

I teach at the college level and students sometimes forget that an assignment is due tonight.  I would like a configurable way for Canvas to message the student if a deadline is looming and they have not submitted the assignment.  

I think of it as adding alerts to the To Do List, similar to those I can add to my Google Calendar.

[Stef_retired]

Nudge might well accomplish what many of you are after. Nudge was demonstrated at InstructureCon 2017 and is currently being tested. You can read one community member's writeup of the presentation here: Nudge .  @kona ‌ has also blogged about her experience with Nudge in https://community.canvaslms.com/people/kona 

[tiffany_maglasa]

You should also be able to message students who score below a certain value (e.g., 60%). Because one of the first things I do, before grading, is set the grades to 0 for people with missing work... which then negates the entire function of that missing assignment message. Also, I want to message people with low scores too, not just those who didn't turn it in... In fact, I think your competitor (D2L) let me do that in my previous courses I taught using them. 

Furthermore, I HATE that the test student is included in all of these messages, statistics (mean, sd), # of people left to grade, etc. I like being able to see it from the students' point of view; I just don't think the profile should function as an actual student. If this is you, upvote my idea: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/9636-exclude-test-student-from-statistics  or https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/6082-real-student-view?sr=search&searchId=ca810cc6-98e8-4ad0-8...‌ idea. 

[thompsli]

You can message people with scores below a certain value from the Gradebook (not from the individual quiz, but from the Grades page).

From the Quiz's page you can message students who have taken the quiz or who have not taken the quiz after choosing that option from the "gear" menu.

From the Gradebook page, if you choose the arrow that appears in the assignment header for any assignment (including a quiz) when you hover over that assignment header in the gradebook, you instead have the choices of "haven't submitted yet", "haven't been graded", "scored less than" (and then you choose a number), or "scored more than" (and then you choose a number). The only option you don't have from Grades that you do from Quiz is the option of messaging everyone who has taken it regardless of score. 

I have no idea why these two ways of getting to this option have different choices, but the good news is that the options for "message students who..." in the gradebook are pretty good. (I have a Tampermonkey script that I got from someone else in the community that I use to be able to add Observer Accounts of my students to those messages too. If you also work with k-12 students who have parent accounts, you may want to consider adding it. It can be found here :https://community.canvaslms.com/message/50792-messaging-observers-of-students-in-canvas?sr=search&se...‌ .)

[tiffany_maglasa]

Ahh thank you, yes, I found the answer via another idea: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/9629-how-about-an-e-mail-selected-users-function-in-the-gradeb... 

However, I want the ability to message students from the individual quiz/assignment... Why have only 2 of the options on the individual item instead of all 4 that are available in the grade book.???

[thompsli]

I can think of no good "on purpose" reason, so I assume it's that the features were coded independently of each other and they happened to put in different options the two times they wrote the feature.

I've heard rumors that a "communication" overhaul will happen sometime after they finish the Gradebook and Quiz overhauls, so hopefully they'll look holistically at what kinds of messages we need to be able to send and where we should be able to send them from as part of that possible future project.

[don_bryn]

Any type of automated messages would be a time saver by default ("automated!).  This would be so useful for many things, discussions being the most important one for me right now.   Students this fall are somehow confused about having to post initial posts and replies on different due dates.   It would be great to have an automated message go out before the initial posts are due and the final posts, just to keep students on track.  

The same would be great for all of my assignments and quizzes with due dates.   1 Email warning, 1 email if students missed a due date, who knows what other options. . . 

[kmeeusen]

Generally, if this feature existed I might use it on occasion. Our previous LMS had this feature, I used it, but quite sparingly.

I am a strong fan of teacher presence in online courses, and teacher presence is not accomplished through robotic messaging - students quickly catch on that it is not a human being interacting with them. Automated reminders and alerts are fine. For more information on the importance of  teacher presence please check out meaningful Learning: Teacher Presence and Learner Engagement in the Online Classroom.

Also working in Higher Ed we are always concerned about, or should be, with student financial aid and the Department of Education's requirement for regular and substantive faculty interaction in distance learning courses. While robot messages are regular, they are not meaningful nor substantive, and do not meet the DOE's requirements. You can learn more in this article published by WCET, Interpreting what is Required for "Regular and Substantive Interaction".

[vcarmer]

I'm using the "free for teachers" version, so I'm going to assume that messaging students who have not completed an assignment from the gradebook is for the paid version.  I can do this with the quizzes, but not assignments.  If I'm wrong on this, please let me know.

Thanks

[vcarmer]

Is Nudge an option within the paid version of Canvas?