"Message OBSERVERS of Students Who..." in Grade books!

[jeff_pence]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

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K12 teachers MUST have the ability to "Message The Observers of Students Who...directly from the grade book. To maintain contact with Parents.

As a K-12 teacher, communication with parents (Observers) was one of the biggest challenges that almost turned our school away from using Canvas. Being able to communicate with the Parent/Observer in conjunction with, or at least as much as the Student, is incredibly important. For example, if a student is missing an assignment or needs to make revisions, as a teacher, I can send a message to the Student directly from the grade book. However, in order for me to contact the parent/Observer, I need to write myself a paper note and then go the Messages/Inbox (a more manual strategy). It would be better if communication between teacher and student were more transparent to the parent and to have an easier, more direct line of communication to the parent. I don't know if the new/in-progress parent app does more than allow parents to easier check grades. I think that for the teacher, improving the ways in which we can communicate with an Observer/Parent would greatly improve the functionality and ease of use of the Canvas platform.

Therefore, I propose that teachers have the ability to "Message The Observers of Students Who..." in addition to the current/only "Message Students Who" directly from the grade book.

NOTE: This is a resubmission of a feature originally proposed by by Amber De Petro on May 19, 2016.

[Renee_Carney]

Thank you for your idea!  It will open for voting, March 1, 2017, as part of the relaunch of feature idea voting!  Find out more about the changes we made in Changes are here: New feature idea processes went live Friday! (2/24/17)

[KristinL]

Hi! This would simplify a few things, wouldn't it? My school wished for this a while ago, and we've used the tip/trick shared in Messaging Observers of Students in Canvas to make it easier to connect with our Observers. As this feature idea remains open for voting, hopefully, other K-12 Users vote as well!

[jeff_pence]

YES.    As the link in  @KristinL 's  post is in a discussion thread, be sure to vote here!

[jeff_pence]

Thank you  @amber_depetro ‌ for the original suggestion and write-up for this feature!  I am hoping it will garner more votes since it was originally posted in the summer when most of us were otherwise occupied.

[hjpowel]

Very useful to be able to select observers (parents) for students who meet assignment specific criteria such as missing assignments, low scores, and more general criteria such as overall average is below a certain threshold.

[joseph_allen]

This is a great idea and well articulated.  I had it on my list of things to bring up with Instructure as well.  Just to add a little more rationale, parents are now expecting that every communication their kids receive from teachers, they will also receive.  So as stated in the original idea, if a teacher communicates to the students from the gradebook, say about a late assignment or a low grade, parents/ observers need, and are expecting, that communication as well.   I don't think this was originally part of Canvas because quite frankly 'parents' weren't part of the original Canvas, but at the K12 level, parent communication and inclusion on everything a student gets is critical.   

I would like to expand slightly on the idea - when a teacher goes into their conversations / inbox to send a message to the class, students and parent /observers are present.  However there is no visual linkage to show which parents go with which students.  In this age of diverse family types and different last names, teachers have a difficult time figuring that out.  Again other systems were natively built this way so you'll see buttons for 'message student, message parents, message students and parents' which make it very easy.  Right now our school system which has more than 100k parents often suggests teachers use tools other than Canvas to communicate as it is too cumbersome.  Let's make this kind of thing happen very soon in Canvas so teachers can stay in one system.  

[kristyn_neubaue]

It would be AMAZING and save teachers time instead of having to individually send the same messages over and over again.

[petern]

Essential idea.  Someone asked me today how they could do this.  

[GideonWilliams]

Why would you vote this idea down? Surely transparent and timely communication with parents is critical...

[sadenniston]

I avoid Conversations for contacting parents (Observers) as, in addition to other frustrations, there is no way to differentiate which parents are associated with which child if the surname is the same.