How to email all students
Answered
I was told to contact students using the Announcements button as that would push to their email addresses, but not to use the email function. But students don't seem to be getting the announcements in all cases. Please advise: what is the best way to email all students in the clas using the Canvas platform? Thanks.
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Official comment
Short answer:
Announcements are the recommended way to contact students via Canvas if you're sending a message to the whole class. If students are not getting announcements via email, they need to make sure that they are not blocking email from notifications@instructure.com, and make sure that they are checking their SFSU email as that's where those messages will go. Further, students have the ability to turn off email notifications entirely.
Long answer:
Canvas does not do email, at least not in the "traditional" sense. What Canvas does instead is trigger notifications that go out to students based on whatever settings students have set on their profiles. By default, Canvas will send out notifications for Announcements and Inbox messages to email, but students have the ability to change those settings and turn off those notifications entirely.
When you post an announcement, send a message via inbox, grade something, or choose to notify a student that something in the class has changed, a notification is generated, and it will go out to the student depending on what they have their preferences set to. It will also trigger a notification on the website if they're logged in, and on the Canvas Student app if they have that.
Comment actions -
So essentially there is no way of reaching a student if they opt-out. Sometimes a student enrolls in a class and does not participate. If they have set their canvas profile to not forward notifications they will not hear from me. I guess the work-around would be to pull the email(s) from the prerequisite roster, but many students don't check their SFSU email. Somewhat related: how about the activity tracking? iLearn could sent reminder emails to complete a quiz but Canvas could only post an announcement if it even does track the activity. I assume it does not?
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The feature you're referring to is something we custom built for iLearn; it doesn't exist in Canvas. What Canvas does let you do, though, is in certain reports you can select the results of your filters and choose to message students that way. It's not automated, but it can be a lot more granular than the activity reminders we built.
In New Analytics you can filter students in various ways, and then using the envelope icon, message those specific students.
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