There are two primary tools to communicate with students in CarmenCanvas:
Announcements
Announcements allow instructors to communicate with students about course news and updates. Using announcements as your default for all-class communications is a good practice because of the high visibility in Carmen. The Conversations (Inbox) is best for communicating with individual students.
Here are some things you may want to know about Announcements:
- Students are able to comment on announcements unless comments are disabled or comments are closed for an individual announcement.
- By default, announcement notifications are set to be sent immediately, but users can adjust the setting.
- New Announcements appear within the Course Activity Stream, which displays all recent activity within the course.
- Announcement notifications may appear on the Dashboard within the Course Cards if enabled in the Course Navigation Menu.
- All Announcements display within the Announcements section of the course if enabled.
Messaging Students in Canvas
Conversations (Inbox) is a messaging system within Canvas allowing users to send messages to each other. Assuming students have not changed their default notifications settings, this is the closest equivalent in Canvas to sending email from within your course.
Access the Inbox from any course using the global navigation menu.
See Carmen Notification Preferences for information on setting up notifications and safelisting Canvas emails.
Sending Messages in Canvas
You can message all students in the course using the Inbox. In order to message students, your course must be published. If your Canvas course is not published when you attempt to message students, you will not be able to select students in the 'To' field.
BCC Student Messages
Select the "Send individual messages" option. Canvas will send messages individually and recipients will not see another person's information in the 'To' field.