Notifications by Course

[19045]

It would be great to be able to set notifications for each individual course.  There have been many times that I needed really detailed notifications and other times I needed nearly zero notifications.  Under the current system it is all or none.

Note from the Community Team:https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1179-users-need-to-be-able-to-customize-notifications-at-the-c... also requests this capability. We consider combined support for both ideas as part of our regular prioritization process.

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For details, please read through the Canvas Release Notes (2020-04-18). 

[allison]

I've begun the process of exploring this with our engineers. In order to arrive at the ability to set different notifications for different courses, we would need to do a fair amount of refactor work around how Notification Preferences are designed as well as how they work behind the scenes. What I would like to do during the next few months is begin some discovery around which notifications are used the most by our users, why they matter, and what action is taken as a result of receiving the notification. I should highlight that this is a big project. I expect that the discovery, research, and design phases by themselves will take several months and that we'll move forward cautiously to ensure that what we build is something we feel good about maintaining long term.

My plan is to archive this thread for now but with the intention of starting a user group in the near future.

[jbrady2]

This would be great.  I hope this function eventually comes to Canvas.  As an instructional designer at my institution, I am enrolled in many courses as adjunct faculty, as a teacher within my department, and as a designer for full-time faculty.  While I need and want to see notifications for my own courses, I do not need to receive notifications from courses where I am enrolled as a designer unless, of course, I am enrolled to specifically test a reported notification issue.

[wilco001]

Yes, please!!

[s_d_duke]

This was one of the first suggestions/requests made by colleagues when they started using Canvas for real back in September 2013. It would be so useful (although obviously complex for those with many course enrolments).

Now in our third year of Canvas use this issue hasn't gone away; it just means some colleagues tend to switch off most notifications that would be useful if only they could be specific to some courses.

[sadenniston]

Consider this nightmarish, yet actual scenario for a large amount of parents (observers) at our School:

We have three campuses. In addition to their subject courses, a student is enrolled in a Whole Campus course, a Year Level course, House course, a Sport course, their Camp course, and any other co-curricular courses they may be in.

Let's say that's 9 subject courses, plus between at least 5 more, for a total of at least 14.

Imagine you are a parent and observing 4 of your children who attend the school. You aren't interested in receiving notifications for anything other than a few academic courses in which your children are students. You are, however, getting bombarded with at the very least 56 notifications a day, because you can't turn off notifications for specific courses. Frustrated that you can't customise from where notifications come, you turn them off altogether, and in the process cut off the ability of your children's instructors to send a message to you directly (and the instructors don't know who has turned notifications off, so they may be making false assumptions about always being able to reach parents).

We are facing this scenario now and are grappling with how to handle the problem, as we have sold Canvas to teachers as a communication medium between the school and parents.

I'd like to hear if anyone has faced a similar problem and found a resolution?

Cheers

[irishb]

It would be GREAT to have more control over Notifications by Course and/or Section.

Thank you so much to everyone who keeps this request on the radar!

[rover]

Definitely a necessary feature.

[1086095]

A student, who is also a representative in our university's Student Technology Council, reported to us that many of his classmates, including members of the Council, felt that they were receiving too many notifications from the LMS. Specifically, they were getting frequent grade change notifications from their large-enrollment lecture classes where instructors use audience response devices (clickers) for attendance and lecture engagement.  There are several of these courses, and the potential impact is thousands of students. Instructors typically upload/sync scores after each session, and each session is created automatically as an Assignment during the sync, thus triggering notifications for grades.

While students can change their notification settings for grade changes, they prefer not to because they want to be able to still receive notifications from their other courses. Yes, they can set up a filter in their email application, but this would require getting the right key words. Many have set up mobile device notifications, as well, where message filtering would not be possible.

I imagine that muting assignments would also help in the effort to reduce notification fatigue, but given that it is not a default setting or an available option upon assignment creation (it is a Feature Idea that is being discussed by the product team: ), then helping users have finer-grain control of how they are notified would help our students get the information they need in way that is relevant and constructive.

[ladonnaoros]

This scenario is very similar to what we are finding in our community as we begin to use Canvas. Parents have several students. As well, we use courses to disseminate other types of information. Many of our parents have three, four, or more students. Multiply that times several classes per day, and this amounts to announcment overload. After awhile it's hard to pay attention to what's important. Parents can't turn off announcements altogether because some of the notifications are critical, but it would be very helpful if they could turn off or down the courses that are not critical.

[scottdennis]

Hi All,

I just wanted to let you know that work on this one is ongoing.  Its actively being worked on.  I don't have any timeline but thought some of you would want to know that it is moving forward.