[Inbox] Email (message) multiple classes at one time

[emalates]

Instructors often want, or are asked, to share news and information of importance to all our classes.  Currently, that means copying and pasting that information into anywhere from 2-5 different classes.  Given that there is a drop down box for choosing a class to message currently, adding the ability to select multiple classes seems like it would be an easy "fix".  Please add this capability ASAP.

[britta_burton]

Stephanie et al, I have posted about this several times over the last 2 years and NOTHING. I have a feeling that the developers or people in charge have never actually taught a class, let alone a class with multiple sections. Every other LMS has this BASIC feature. What is the problem????

[Steven_S]

Stephanie, I agree this is badly needed!

However, if I had 96 sections of the same course, I would ask my admin to create a shared canvas course for all of them.  I do this now for the video linked courses that I teach simultaneously on multiple campuses.  With a shared course you decide which assignments, announcements, emails, etc go to all sections as opposed to any particular subset of sections.  For example, you could send an emails to everyone and create assignments once with due dates set section by section. It would be a huge time saver for you in more than just emails.  You can also grade assignments for all sections all at once, or have your gradebook display only one section at a time.

[sdillon1]

Hi Steven,

I was told by our canvas Administration that we cannot set due dates by section in a cohort. You can only set the due dates for the entire cohort. I will ask again if this is possible.

Thanks,

Stephanie

Stephanie R. Dillon

Director Freshman Laboratories

Chemistry and Biochemistry

Florida State University

sdillon@fsu.edu 850-644-0166

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

[Steven_S]

Stephanie, if she says no, keep asking questions here.  I have the ability to assign by section in a course I am teaching right now.  If your admin believes you will not, there is probably a box she needs to click somewhere.  I haven't seen the admin side of how our combined sections are set up.

[sdillon1]

Ok thanks.

Stephanie

Stephanie R. Dillon

Director Freshman Laboratories

Chemistry and Biochemistry

Florida State University

sdillon@fsu.edu 850-644-0166

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

[principal]

And still, after a meeting evaluating Q3 2019 items to work on, they STILL consider it not worthy of working on.  It seems they really don't understand how unnecessarily time-consuming this is.

[ssmith31]

Please let's get this passed!  I have so much wasted time tied up in copying and pasting messages for different sections of the same class!

[10012475]

I have sent this idea along with may other people. It has reached hundreds

of votes and they don't do anything. I think it's not worth to spend the

time voting. I did it several times and it doesn't help

On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 12:10 PM communityteam <instructure@jiveon.com>

[britta_burton]

I believe you're right, Olga. I have come to the conclusion that this voting system is simply to appease the masses but does not garner any actual results. Several ideas I have supported and that had gained more than enough votes have never come to fruition (emailing multiple classes, scrambling quiz answers, ...).

[principal]

I have been voting and commenting on this issue for years, but I have also been bugging every Canvas account representative I've had about this relentlessly.  One thing that makes it frustrating for us is that when we signed up for Canvas in 2012, one of the reasons we signed up for it was that students could email anyone in the school, and of course teachers could as well.  Then they took that away and made it so that teachers could only email one class at a time.  Our teachers have many courses, so they may have to copy & paste a message 20 or 30 times -- it's an incredible waste of time.

What I've been told in response to this not having been tackled yet is that it's not just votes that affect what changes are made in the Canvas system; it also has to do with technical issues.  For example, sometimes multiple changes (from idea voting) can be done fairly easily with one code re-write, whereas another one would require extensive changes in other parts of the system (a kind of domino effect) that would make what seems to be a simple change not so simple.  This is an answer as to how such decisions are generally made, not this particular issue.

All this to say, voting is an important part of the process but not the only factor in deciding.  I am glad to see this is finally ranking close to the top 10. Our staff has been desperately waiting for years for Canvas to address this; they can't do it soon enough!