Canvas Communication Tools

Canvas includes a number of tools that instructors use to communicate with and interact with you through a course site. Students can control how they receive communication from Canvas via their notification preferences.

Announcements

Announcements are used to communicate important course related information. As soon as an instructors posts an Announcement, Canvas notifies you according to your preferred Notification Preferences through text message, or email.

Canvas Announcements resources

Conversations

Conversations are email-like messages sent within Canvas' internal messaging system. Students are alerted to new messages on their dashboard screen upon logging in. You can also receive conversations via email or text based on your notification settings.

Canvas Conversation tool how-to resources

Discussions

Canvas provides an integrated system for focused and threaded discussions so that both instructors and students alike can start and contribute to as many discussion topics as desired. Discussions are date stamped when created, or replied to, and can be enhanced with any rich media like video, images, wikis, files attachments, and can be created as an assignment for grading purposes (which is then seamlessly integrated with the Canvas gradebook), or simply as a forum for topical and current events.

Discussions how-to resources

115 - Conversations Overview from Instructure Community on Vimeo.

218 - Discussions from Instructure Community on Vimeo.