[Notifications] Default notification settings profiles by user role

[seth]

As an account or subaccount admin, I want to set default notification settings for my users by role. Like role-based permissions, these notification settings could be locked or unlocked; that is, I could choose to allow users in a given role to change a default notification setting or not.

transferred from the old Community

Originally posted by: Kurt Beer
Special thanks for contributions by: Pamela Wik-Grimm, Simon B. Walker, Tricia Jackson

[scottdennis]

Hi David,

Yes, any idea that is closed as archived due to not reaching the 100 vote threshold can be resubmitted for a new round of voting.  However, please stay tuned for an announcement coming in the next few days about a change in the voting process that will affect all ideas that open for vote after the December cohort.

[dwillmore]

Thank you, and I will keep an eye out for the change.

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

snufer‌, you are so right.  Instructors need a way to ensure students receive an email notification of course announcements and/or conversations.  It should be an administrator option to force immediate notification on some or all categories.  It will be up to us to not mis-use this option.  I'd be happy with the capability to force on just those two items.

As it is the only way to ensure students get important information is to email them from an external account.  Yes you can't make students read all emails! But we can tell them at the beginning of the semester to check them every day. Students could still choose an alternative notification method, like texts, if they prefer.

[DrNufer]

Absolutely. We don't want to abuse announcements, but even for those professors that do (I know one), I still think the students are obligated to "listen".  In a brick and mortar classroom, students are really never allowed to zone out during housekeeping and announcements. It behooves them to listen, and really they are accountable for the content so they are obligated to listen. Same for online. 

[Renee_Carney]

This idea is one of the lucky ones that was selected to get a little more time for voting as part of our evolution of the feature idea process. It was selected because of it's vote count and/or comment thread.

*Selection criteria: Most (not all) ideas that received 70+ votes in their initial voting round.

[tross]

I really like this idea.  We would love to stop people turning off announcements.

[laurakgibbs]

I voted up... although I personally prefer the idea of unlocking the settings so that students can configure their notifications if they want (it seems to me that is a good real-world skill for them to learn and practice before they are deluged with an avalanche of Slack notifications at their first job out of school!)

And FWIW in the two student surveys I've conducted during our first year of Canvas, students have said they wanted to be able to configure notifications by class, which I totally understand given the very different ways in which instructors are using Canvas on our campus.

More from my student surveys here; I find it very interesting to ask them how things are going. I learn a lot. 🙂

https://community.canvaslms.com/thread/15778-what-do-your-students-say-about-canvas 

[kmeeusen]

Hi Deactivated user

I voted down, and I will tell you why. One of the things we tell users is that Notifications are theirs, and only theirs, and they have complete control over them! This is important for users!

Join any social media site, and you get to control your notifications! Participate in almost any website that features some form of communication, and you get to to control the communication. Use Outlook, you get control.

People have the right to control who blows up their email and mobile devices - even students and teachers!

I see no good reason for taking that control away.

KLM

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

laurakgibbs‌, it would be nice to configure notifications by class.

I would hope that if it were possible to force certain notifications, Admins wouldn't abuse this feature, and only use it for important tasks.  Perhaps only for course announcements, conversation messages. At the beginning of a semester, teachers would like to use such things to contact all the students in their classes.  If some students have turned off notifications, they won't receive the message in a timely fashion. In Moodle we were allowed to force email notifications for certain items.  I believe students should choose on most notifications, but for important announcements (class is cancelled tonight, the final exam location is changed, you are about to be dropped for non-participation) we really need students to be notified.

If this idea doesn't pass, I wonder if we could have a "send email notification" checkbox on announcements and conversations that would override student preference?  We'd have to trust instructors not to abuse this privilege.

I'd also like to see what students prefer for their notifications so they don't get overwhelmed, and we could set the default.  Do they really need to know immediately if an instructor has added content?  Or if a new file is added to the course?  I remember being overwhelmed with notifications when I first used Canvas.  That's not a good student experience.  Would be nice to recommend settings to students, or make the most useful settings the default.

[dwillmore]

I always support the opt-out because I hate to be forced into spam.   What is important to you may not be to me.   I just want to set the default to a proper setting.   If the student or faculty want to change the settings, that is okay.  We are higher ed so I would think in k-12 you may have other needs.