Canvas Announcements Privacy

[beterplace12345]

I am currently a college student. When our professors post announcements they can land in our email. This is very good and is a very useful feature. The problem I have faced and I feel it is imperative that it be addressed is any reply to these emails lands in the announcements.

This would be fine and useful if there was a writer on all announcement emails informing the recipient that any replies would be public and posted in the announcements section.

I was under the impression that what I had received was a mass email from my professor and due to computer issues I had to submit my assignment via my phone. To ensure that the professor received the assignment I included it in the body of my email, replying to his email reminding us our first assignment was due.

My first assignment was a very personal self introduction including my name, age, and weight, physical limitations, and former employer. 

All of this information landed in the announcement section of canvas without my knowledge or permission.

I love how canvas allows us to communicate with our professors. I love that we can reply to the announcements section. I can understand how this issue may have never come up before, so I don't blame anyone but it's something that really needs to be fixed. I don't want anyone else to go through this.

[Renee_Carney]

@beterplace12345, 

We are so grateful for you posting your experience here in such a kind way, and we want to apologize. It is important to all of us that learners feel comfortable and confident in where their posts are landing - especially wen they are being vulnerable with their instructors. Our Community team has shared your experience with our Product and Engineering team and they are exploring a solution so that other students do not have a similar experience. Thank you again, and we know your fellow learners thank you too. 

Best of luck in your studies. 

[jsailor · Accepted solution]

@beterplace12345,

Thank you again for sharing your experience with us. As @Renee_Carney mentioned, we want to do all that we can to ensure learners feel comfortable and confident in where their posts are seen and by whom when responding to announcements in their Canvas courses. Given your experience, a warning will now display in the notification for an announcement, letting the user know that replies are public and will be posted to the announcement. This will be live for all users with our February 15, 2023 deploy. You can read more about this update in our most recent deploy notes.