[Inbox] Instructors should be notified if their reply to student messages are not being sent

[agschmid]

This goes along with https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Canvas-Inbox-Messages-Fully-Obey-Course-Partic...

Once a course has closed, whether by course dates or by term dates, students can continue to reply to an existing message from the instructor.

The instructor receives the reply and if the instructor replies to the student after the course/term end date, the message seems to be sent, is shown in the message thread, but the student actually never receives it. 

This causes students to complain that instructors are not answering their messages, and instructors are bewildered because their thread shows that they did reply.

According to Instructure support, this is the intended behavior. Students cannot create a new message after course/term end (and this works - see the screen shot and the little pop-up), but students can still reply to an existing message from the instructor. That the instructor's reply seems to be sent but is actually never received by the student is also their "intended" behavior.

If the course/term end dates are not honored for student replies, then at the very least I think the instructor should receive a pop-up (as the student receives when trying to send a new message after the course/term end) stating their reply is not being sent instead of displaying it in the thread as if it were received by the student.

I did some testing and have some screen shots that show the behavior. In my opinion this is a major bug, especially the instructor portion.

[mnemeth]

The Reply to a Canvas Message that the Instructor sees but the student does NOT ever receive has caused our school much grief.  Especially students that have an Incomplete in the course.  They believe they are communicating with the Instructor, who believes they are replying, BUT the Student NEVER sees or gets the response. 

Instructors then think the students is not finishing the course work, but they don't know about the conversation of the next step.

PLEASE FIX this problem by either Disabling the Canvas Message Reply after a course section ends OR by allowing the Reply to make it to the Student when the Instructor sends it (and it shows in the conversation thread).  The Student never seeing it is a HUGE problem.

[GlynnFowler]

I agree with the 'idea' that students and instructors should be able to continue conversations via Canvas email after the semester ends.  Most instructors continue to interact with and assist their 'former' students after their official time together ends.  It's what we do!  

I have received emails for an entire semester from students that were titled with their class for the previous semester.  If this can occur, and it does cause some instructor confusion as to in which class the student is actually currently enrolled, why can students not continue to interact with their instructors via Canvas email?  Either disable it altogether or allow continued communication.  Having it set both ways is confusing to the student and creates multiple problems for instructors, especially the truly dedicated ones and there are still some of us 'out here'!  We do not abandon our students just because our time 'together' has officially ended.  

I recently had a totally online student who came to campus to check and see if I was okay.  I'm known for answering promptly and after over a week of non-communication to emails from my student in Canvas, she feared the worst.  This is not acceptable.  The message you are sending regarding my demise is grossly premature! 

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

I wonder if Canvas has tried to fix this, seems like it is no longer possible to reply to a student message which was sent from a concluded course.  Unfortunately, the student can still reply to a teacher's message sent while the course was active, but there's no way to respond in Canvas. 

The only solution is to reply using external email after looking up the student's email address.  That's available to our instructors, but perhaps not in all schools.

[jwhalen]

Hello, 

I want to lend my support to this issue being fixed. It is absolutely necessary. I am here trying to track down the current status of the ‘automatic reply’ through the Canvas inbox (create that feature, or at least make it so that out of office replies in Outlook interact with Canvas). Sadly, all proposed workarounds to the issue do not work, and it seems as if the issue has been abandoned.

Meanwhile, faculty attend multiple meetings and summits about equity each year. We do so much work towards equity at our level. Obscuring email contact between faculty to students or otherwise failing to indicate messages that don’t send seems like a massive equity issue. I am not sure if there is a way to to effectively communicate to Canvas just how central this issue is to initiatives that entire consortia of colleges are working towards. 

I had absolutely no idea that students do not receive my emails to their replies after a course has ended. We are not aware. There is no way to check this except polling students- whose email addresses I do not have after the course has ended (and from institutional polling at our college, we have discovered that students don’t even check their student emails. They often only use the Canvas inbox). 

This is such an important issue. I cannot see any way to “vote” for the change here. Please fix it. 

Sadly, I am only able to check on the email replies and auto replies issue once a year, during the summer months. I do not have time to follow this throughout the year, and I am not a programmer or other so I have very little understanding of what on earth any of you are talking about. Is there really no other way to advance good ideas as fixes in Canvas? 

We are also waiting 10+ years now for the “matching” option to be available in multiple choice questions, despite significant requests from faculty. I can only conclude that there simply is not a way to persuade Canvas to adjust their product for things that really do make a difference in education, and the science of instruction. 

[Nancy_Webb_CCSF]

@jwhalen, now you should no longer be allowed to reply to students since those messages were never sent.  It requires using the students email address, leaving inbox unanswered.

And agreed, inability of teachers to reply to a student's message after the course is closed is an  equity issue.  Would you please vote on this idea?  Canvas Inbox Messages – Fully Obey Course Particip... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com) 

Although I am not sure if we need a different idea, to allow teachers to reply to these inbox messages, rather than denying students the ability to write to teachers if it's not allowed by course participation dates. What do you think?