Late bloomers we are, but we will catch up...

[julcastr]

It has taken some time to encourage students and faculty to use mobile apps when accessing our Canvas instance, but we have made a lot of progress. This push came after we encouraged users to use the Calendar feature in their mobile devices. Our curriculum revolves around class calendars, and they needed a convenient way to access all the events in their classes. This has been a tremendous success, they can even access assignments and download attachments posted in the calendar through their phones and tablets.

Now it might be time to push for the use of mobile devices for other components inside Canvas. We recently acquired the Canvas video solution Arc, and students may be consuming these videos in mobile devices and not so much on PCs.

Regarding notifications, we have seen students turning them off more and more, they find this feature a little annoying, I find it useful though.

I want to know more about the Canvas mobile options and features, I will be doing more research on this and hopefully I will be able to share with all of you.

Thank you.

[rseilham]

Hi julcastr‌, 

I'm glad to see your students and teachers are opening up to using the mobile apps for Canvas. Mobile is very interesting. I'm not sure if the goal should be to simply get more users to use the apps, but make users more aware that it's an option when not on a laptop/desktop. Of course, usage can be a good metric for this. 

At our school (UCF), the students value the grades the most. This isn't a surprise, as students are very invested in knowing how they did. As for mobile apps, we have found students want three things in a mobile app 1) How am I doing? (grades) 2) What do I need to do? (assignments, announcements, inbox) 3) When is it due? (to-do, assignments). We don't have the majority of student submitting assignments and quizzes through the Student app. Of course, this would be much different for other schools, particularly if they are 1:1. 

As for Teachers, the most important features revolve around communication. This is the inbox and announcements. Just being able to facilitate this aspect of a course while on-the-go is a must of most teachers. The Canvas Teacher app also adds some nice features that remove the "pain points" of Canvas on-the-go. Examples of this are adjusting typos on a page, adjusting assignment settings, changing due dates, or viewing student information. 

I have followed the Canvas Mobile apps since 2012 and with the addition of the Teacher app last year, and the overhaul of the Student app this year, it's in the best shape ever. The apps are a lot more consistent, have better performance, and include the most intuitive user interface to date. 

Good luck!