"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.

[jeff_pence]

The program knows which observer is connected with each student and would, therefore, contact the correct ones and remove the possibility of miscommunication.

[marthazumack]

I just came across this fantastic resource Messaging Observers of Students in Canvas while looking into this today. It's a script you can add to your account that automatically adds Observers to a message. It may be a useful work-around as long as Canvas is set up this way. 

[joseph_allen]

Martha,  we just implemented this code and it works.  There is one major problem though, it only works for individual messages.  Most of our teachers are trying to send a message to 'all students' in their course, not just individual students.  That script cannot look up bulk groups like that.  I think  @Steve_25   is trying to overcome that limitation now.  

[Steve_25]

Hi Joe, I have indeed been working on a group lookup solution which is now available here: Messaging Observers of Students in Canvas.

[james_sanzin]

This needs your up vote #please vote

[joseph_allen]

James, Stephen Rice has basically solved and added this functionality with his JS code.  We installed it and it is working great.  Yes, Canvas should build this into the product just to be more K12 friendly, but in the mean time give Stephen's code a shot.  

[heather_richmon]

This would be a great tool to track evidence of home/parent communication. It would allow teachers to give purposeful feedback.

[janderson11]

Empowering Faculty with a direct just-in-time line of communication to parents to enrich the dialogue for the benefit of students' academic success is a powerful compelling idea hard to not support. As parent [\/] is the K12 model perhaps sculpt its scalability for Universities as well so it would email students [\/] directly there at this touchpoint in comparison.

[Renee_Carney]

 @janderson11 ‌

If I'm understanding your statement correctly, the 'message students who' feature of the gradebook already messages the student directly.  Find more in https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-9996-415255001?sr=search&searchId=4b09a976-125b-4121-9245-6...‌

[janderson11]

ok if theres a line to students already then perhaps Id suggest a direct line of communication be available if not to parents (at the university level) then to university counseling center group email address fielding incoming concerns... Flagging slipping performance or other classroom concerns from faculty has been a gap (in timeliness) Ive tried to help advocate for ways to help propel additional supports for students... thoughts? also, maybe this feature should fork from @Pence's k12 idea...