Add "Contact My Teacher" link to Course Home Page

[aaron_bahmer]

It'm quite surprised to find that "conatcting my teacher" with a Conversation message is not a very straightforward thing to do from the course context. From what I have observed, only by visiting the Inbox can a student intiate a message (email) to their teacher. Compare this to the multiple opportunities that a teacher has to contact students by Conversations (listed often as email).

I suggest that the course home page feature a permanent link/button (with the View Course Stream and View Course Calendar buttons) that intiates a Conversations email message to the teacher (or as suggested in https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/4354-allow-students-to-email-all-teachers  -- all of them).

Places other than the course home where such a link/button would be useful? Grades. There could be others. Thanks!

[awilliams]

Hi,  @aaron_bahmer . A student can initiate a message to their instructors from anywhere in Canvas using the Help Menu. Check out How do I get help with Canvas as a student? I hope this helps and since I believe this is already possible, I am going to mark this idea for archival.

[aaron_bahmer]

awilliams, thanks for reminding me about the help feature. Although I recognize the handy, global scope of that Help location for a "contact my teacher link" and that its default behavior is to send the message to all teachers and TAs, I don't think it's enough.That link still prompts the student to select a course, and the fact that it resides in "Help" places it outside of the mindset of a student who wants to contact their teacher for any other reason than "I need help (with Canvas)."

I think it makes a lot of sense for a student to have access to the link I suggested in the immediate context of the course. From my suggested link, students could have the option of choosing one, many, or all teachers/TAs. I certainly don't suggest removing the link available in Help, but I would appreciate the opportunity for this suggestion to be voted on related to this difference in context and mindset. Thank you.

[aaron_bahmer]

Thanks for opening!

[Betsy_Ross]

@aaron_bahmer  I second the motion!   It would be super helpful if I, as a teacher, could add a link on my course home page for students to send me a message through canvas.  Yes, they can go to inbox, but at my school, we are all just beginning and we are told to use Canvas as the main mode for communication.  However, students are going to find us putting our e-mails everywhere for contact us because there is no way to link "message my teacher" - Even if the help will send it to everyone, if a student just has a question about the course and doesn't want to post it where everyone will see it- they need a message my teacher link 🙂 

@awilliams Please consider opening this again as something that could be added. 

[Stef_retired]

@Betsy_Ross 

@awilliams opened this idea in April 2020.

[laura_clark]

At the middle and secondary levels, we have a lot of requests for this option and the only way we've found to create a link for a button is at the admin level which is not sustainable.

[ProductPanda]

Comments from Instructure

As part of the new Ideas & Themes process, all ideas in Idea Conversations were reviewed by the Product Team. Any Idea that was associated with an identified theme was moved to the new Idea & Themes space. Any Idea that was not part of the move is being marked as Archived. This will preserve the history of the conversations while also letting Community members know that Instructure will not explore the request at this time.