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Needed: journal or one-on-one discussion with students feature
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Over the past term, I’ve explored multiple Canvas tools to build a “student channel” workflow: a space where students can post updates or reflections and receive timely, individualized responses. My goal was to create a system that supports:
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Private, threaded dialogue.
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Instructor notifications for new student posts.
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Visibility tracking or status indicators in CANVAS to ensure no student posts are missed.
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Integration with grading workflows in the event the instructor wants to assign a grade for the student's ongoing interaction with them.
Despite trying several approaches, I found that no single Canvas feature fully supports this use case, which seems to be a core aspect of teaching. Below is a summary of the methods I tested and their limitations:
Assignment comments -- students do not necessarily look at or see instructor comments, and notifications to the instructor regarding new student comments are only via email/push and can be easily missed. There is no notification in the CANVAS system that a student left a comment.
Group discussion -- I tried creating group discussions with one student per group. Instructors cannot subscribe to group discussions so there is no way for me to be alerted of a student post.
Canvas Inbox (Conversations) -- These show up as one single long thread and therefore are not user friendly for a back and forth semester long format. They also do not support multiple conversation threads.
As you can see, I've tried many workarounds and hit impasses along the way. There seems to be no way to achieve a reliable, structured, one-on-one interaction with students in CANVAS. Please let me know if I am mistaken. Otherwise, this is a feature I would like to request.
Thanks!
Akwasi Opoku-Dakwa
