Use Canvas Announcements to send out general messages to your class. It is a good idea to provide a 0-points assignment that guides your students to set up their Canvas notifications. Otherwise, they may not receive your messages.

• How do I set my Canvas notification preferences as a student?
• Consider setting up “automated” messages before the semester starts these can include:
  • Weekly assignment reminders
  • Highlight assignment elements where students typically run into trouble
  • Link to additional resources that can support struggling or high achieving students
  • You can organize your automated announcements using the “Delayed Announcement Modifier” in the Multi-Tool (see below for details)

Setting up some automated messages before the semester starts gives you one less thing to worry about. Don’t forget to set your own notification preferences so that you don’t miss any student questions.

• How do I set my Canvas notification preferences as an instructor?

Chat is a synchronous text communication tool. Some instructors find that it works well for virtual office hours. Enable it within your course by going into “Settings” and dragging it up to the navigation items visible to students.

• Be sure to let students know how to access the chat
• Let them know when your office hours will be
• Click on the “Chat” link in your navigation
• The chat window can be open on your computer while you do other work

Tell students to set up their notification preferences so that their Canvas emails will show up in the UF email account. Students can also go to their Canvas inbox to check for messages. Be sure to let your students know how you will communicate with them.

• How do I use the Inbox as a student?

You should set up your own notifications so that student messages sent to you via the Canvas Inbox will go directly to your UF email account. While you’re at it, this is a good time to upload a photo of yourself. Why? A friendly, smiling picture of you can help students to feel more comfortable about reaching out to ask questions.

The Canvas discussion forum can be a good place for students to ask general course and content questions. This will allow students to respond to each others’ questions and for you to provide FAQs.

• What are Discussions?
• How do I reply to a discussion as a student?

The general questions or FAQ discussion forum should be checked daily. If students don’t receive a response to a query, then they are  likely to resort to emailing you individually. A quick response can help you to answer questions that more than one student may have and help to reduce your emails.

The Canvas files tool can make documents available to students. It is important to organize them so that students know what they should be looking at when. You can group materials into folders by week (or whatever organization schema you prefer) and then number them with the order in which they should be viewed. This method of organization works best if your course content consists of static files. If you have multimedia, links to content outside of your course, and explanations to provide, the Pages tool generally works best.

If you want students to access the files folder, you will need to make them visible to students within the left-hand navigation. How to do this:

1. Choose “Settings” from the left navigation
2. Select “Navigation” from the top menu
3. Drag “Files” from the list of tools at the bottom (these are hidden) to the top list of items
4. Click the “Save” button at the bottom of the page

The Pages tool allows you to create webpages with links to course materials as well as to provide text instructions or other information. Your Canvas pages can be as simple or detailed as necessary. Use headings and subheadings to divide content and maintain accessibility.

The Modules tool allows you to guide students through the course materials in an organized fashion. Create a module for each week (or whatever organizational unit you prefer) and then add pages, files, discussions, assignments and quizzes in the order they should be accessed. You can move things between modules and reordered them easily using the drag and drop interface.

You can also control student access to content based upon completion of assignments or specifying a quiz score. If you wish to use quiz score as a trigger, be sure to allow students multiple re-takes.