Introduction

This page will help you learn how to use the four main communication tools available in Canvas: Announcements, Conversations (Inbox), Chat, and online conferences. Not all courses will use all of these tools, so feel free to choose the features that are most relevant to your specific needs.

On This Page:

Prepare your students for effective communication in Canvas
Create an announcement
Create and manage Conversations (Inbox)
Use Chat
Create online conferences

Prepare your students for effective communication in Canvas

Learn how students can optimize their individual notification settings to be sure they are receiving important updates throughout your course:

User settings & Profile Picture

New Feature - The Course Notification Settings page allows users to enable or disable specific course notifications. This change allows users to manage notification preferences within an individual course.

How do I manage notifications for a single course as an instructor?

Once a notification preference is changed at the course level, the course creates a notification override, meaning it is no longer associated with the preference set in the Notification preferences page. Any additional changes for that notification type must continue to be managed within the course.

Create an announcement

Read this short introduction to learn how you can use announcements to communicate with your entire class:

What are announcements?

Practice creating an announcement in your course sandbox using either of the following tutorials as a guide:

Announcements Overview
How do I make an announcement in my course?

Please Note: When copying announcements from one course to another a live course, be aware of the following behaviors:

If the course is unpublished when the announcements are imported, they will not appear on the Course Activity Stream, but are visible under Announcements.
If the course is published when the announcements are copied over, they are visible in the Course Activity Stream.

Create and manage inbox (conversations)

Canvas' "Inbox ( Conversations) tool is an internal course mail feature that allows you to send messages to individuals or student groups without leaving Canvas. Use the following tutorial to learn how to create and manage conversations in your Canvas inbox:

How do I use the Inbox as an instructor?

Please Note: Your profile and notification settings will allow you to receive alerts about new messages via your chosen email address, and you have the option to respond to Canvas messages using the reply function in your email client. However, that option does not always function as expected. Our recommendation at this time is to return to your Canvas inbox to respond to any messages directly from within Canvas.

Use chat

Read a brief introduction to the purpose and function of Canvas’s chat feature, or watch a video demonstration to learn how to access and use Chat.

What is Chat?
Chat Overview

Zoom

We recommend faculty teaching online use Zoom, Temple's webconferencing tool, for conducting online synchronous sessions. To learn more about how to use Zoom, visit the Center for the Advancement of Teaching's resource page about Zoom.

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