Is There A Discord For Canvas?

[NicholasT1]

Question is the same as the title.

Is there a discord server for Canvas that can be joined? I am a student looking for a community that specializes in Canvas.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi @NicholasT1 ...

Is there a reason why you would want to use Discord over posting your Canvas-related questions here in the official Canvas Community website?  This Canvas Guide has a pretty good summary of what this site (the Canvas Community) is all about: Welcome to the Instructure Community - Instructure Community - 604159.  And, if you'd like to explore other things you can do here in the Community, there are several Guides located at this link: Instructure Community Guide - Instructure Community.

If you have questions about Canvas, we can certainly try to help you.  Keep in mind that if you have questions about the curriculum/content in your course(s), those will have to be addressed by your instructor(s) because we do not have access to your school's Canvas environment or any of your course(s).

I hope this will help a bit.  And, I'm looking forward to hearing back from you to hear more about why you're looking for a Discord server.  Take care, and happy holidays!

[NicholasT1]

The reason I would prefer a Discord server is because Discord is much more like texting and help can be received much faster. However, on here, it is much more like sending emails which leaves me anxious waiting for the person to respond. On Discord, I feel more secure as I can send reminders with the click of a button. With emails oriented things, it is awkward to send a reminder in case someone hasn't responded.

-Nicholas 

[dbrace · Accepted solution]

Hi @NicholasT1.,

As an occasional Discord user myself, it would be challenging for a company like Instructure to have a Discord server for the global Community of customers that they support. This is especially true when Instructure already has a website like this for (amongst other things):

• asking and answering questions (https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Question-Forum/bd-p/questions)
• storing support articles and release (deploy) notes
• blog posts about upcoming new features and enhancements
• writing articles about education
• having user groups for...
  • new functionality in various forms for development (https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Feature-User-Groups/ct-p/betagroups)
  • people of different roles (https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Groups/ct-p/groups)
• requesting new functionality

My thoughts: Check with your school's (whether K-12, higher education, public, or private) Canvas Support team and see if it is something that they are willing to do for just your school.

-Doug

[chriscas]

Hi @NicholasT1,

In addition to the responses provided by @dbrace and @Chris_Hofer, I wanted to add one more piece of info...  Instructure, the company behind Canvas, does offer official support via chat if your school/institution pays for that service.  My institution does pay for it, and the agents on chat usually answer most basic questions within a few minutes.

The community here is available to everyone at no cost, but the responses are usually provided by other users from around the world who are just helping others in their free time.  Sometimes questions here will get answered within a few minutes if someone is looking at the right moment and knows the answer, but other questions may not get answered for days if they are very complex, specific to a certain school/institution, or need to be answered officially by support (which someone will usually let the person who posted the question know at some point).

All this to say that even if the community here did have an "official" discord, it probably wouldn't get you answers any faster (and could end up making things worse by fragmenting the user base).  As @dbrace suggested, maybe your school/institution would be willing to create their own discord space and have staff monitor it and provide answers, as that seems the most feasible route forward for this idea in my head right now.

-Chris