The new interface for e-mailing from the grade book is TERRIBLE. Go back to the old one please.
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Why was the interface to sending e-mails via the grade book changed to make it more difficult to send e-mail?
The new interface is ambiguous. One cannot tell who messages are being sent to (the number of recipients does not update). Also, even if it worked, it is horrible. It requires extra steps to send mail.
Mailing students is already more difficult than it should be. Thre is still no way to mail all students in all classes from the inbox, and there is still no way to e-mail an individual student from their info page or by right-clicking their name in the grade book.
The one saving grace was that I could often e-mail all students in the course fairly easily by mailing all students who, for example didn't turn in an assignment, and then removing those who turned in one of the other assignments that week (so I only e-mail those who did nothing). Now that is more difficult or impossible.
It would be devastating to send drop warnings to students who did enough assignments.
Why do this?
Canvas hasn't been very responsive for key quality of life issues. For example, we have had Canvas at our school for more than 5 years now with the promise of being able to mark quiz questions as EC since day one "coming soon"--but it never has. I still have to warn my students that the grade book can show their score as lower than it is because Canvas is incapable of handling extra credit correctly.
That isn't an irrelevant tangent, because it seems like the Canvas team is spending their time tweaking things to make life more difficult rather than adding in features that instructors have been asking for for at least half a decade.
