Instructor Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Communicating With Your Students

In the UVACanvas system, there are two primary ways to communicate with your course: Announcements and Canvas Inbox.

To ensure the recipient list is hidden in your communications, use Announcements. The Canvas Inbox allows you to send group messages where students can see the recipient list, which may not be appropriate for some messages.

Note: By default, the UVACanvas Announcements and Inbox tools send email notifications of new messages to students. These notifications include a link to access the full announcement or Inbox message within Canvas and may include some limited text content from the message. We recommend that students view the full content of each message by opening it in UVACanvas.

If you prefer to send an Email to your class from Outlook, an email list would need to be created and managed outside of UVACanvas.

Announcements

Students can interact with an announcement by adding comments or by liking (both options can be disabled).

How do I post an announcement?

You can post announcements for your whole class or a group, and choose to schedule them ahead of time. You can choose to allow comments, "likes" for the post, and whether to display recent announcements within the course home page. Learn more in How do I add an announcement in a course? and find additional how-to documentation for various features in the Canvas Guides for Announcements.

Note: Settings in the student profile determine how students are notified of a new course announcement. 

Tip: Your course needs to be "Published" before you can post an announcement. If you want to create an announcement before your course is published, you can set the announcement to post at a later date.

How do I know if the announcement was delivered? Is there a way to get confirmation?

You can enable receiving notifications for your own posted announcements and Inbox messages by following the steps in How do I manage my Canvas notification settings as an instructor? Under the heading, Course Activities, click to activate Announcement Created By You. Enabling this setting will create an automatic email confirmation receipt that an announcement was posted.

Tip: Instructors may also choose to set up an announcement with "liking" enabled and ask that students like the announcement to acknowledge receipt.

Are students notified when I post a class announcement?

All users in Canvas, including students, can customize personal settings for how they receive notifications about new announcements or inbox messages.

By default, Canvas sends an email notification when a new announcement is posted. If a student has the Canvas app, the default setting is for the app to create a push notification on the phone. However, some students may choose to turn these notifications off. 

Regardless of these notification settings, students can view their course announcements when they log in to UVACanvas.

My students report they haven't received notifications in their email from UVACanvas. How can they ensure they get notifications?

There are two ways to help your students ensure they receive notifications about new announcements or inbox messages in their email accounts (such as Outlook):

1. Ask that students check their personal notification settings to enable notifications. 
2. Remind students to confirm their email address in their Canvas account.

In addition, 24/7 how-to support is available to our students.

What does it mean to Allow users to comment?

You can choose to allow students to comment on an announcement to start a discussion on the topic of the announcement. Learn more about allowing comments and deciding if a student is required to comment before seeing other comments. 

Canvas Inbox

Instructors and Teaching Assistants can send messages to students using the Canvas Inbox tool. The inbox tool works like an email inbox and is secure. Messages can easily be sorted.

Learn more in this Inbox Overview guide.

How do I send an inbox message to my students?

The Canvas Inbox works similarly to an email inbox. This guide will walk you through sending an inbox message to your students.

How do I know if the inbox message was received? Is there a way to get confirmation?

You can enable receiving notifications for your own Inbox messages by following the steps in How do I manage my Canvas notification settings as an instructor? Under the heading, Course Activities, click to activate Conversations Created By You. (Inbox is sometimes referred to as a "conversation" in Canvas.)

Enabling this setting will create an automatic email confirmation receipt that an inbox message was sent.

Are students notified when I send an inbox message?

All users in Canvas, including students, can customize personal settings for how they receive notifications about new announcements or inbox messages.

By default, Canvas sends an email notification when a new inbox message is posted. If a student has the Canvas app, the default setting is for the app to create a push notification on the phone. However, some students may choose to turn these notifications off. 

Regardless of these notification settings, students can view inbox messages when they log in to UVACanvas. New messages are displayed as a numerical value on the Inbox label on the sidebar menu. Unread messages must be viewed to clear out the numerical value.

Is the recipient list of an inbox message visible to all recipients?

In many cases, yes. Default visibility of the recipient list depends on number of total recipients:

• If less than 100 recipients: All recipients can view the names of every other recipient by default. To hide the recipient list, select "Send an individual message to each recipient" when composing the message.
• If more than 100 recipients: The recipient list is not visible to individual recipients.

Tips:

• Sending an announcement is the best way to guarantee the recipient list is hidden from students.
• If "Send an individual message to each recipient" is selected, the system generates a copy of the message for each recipient in the sender's inbox.
• In the email notifications for Inbox messages, media (e.g., images or LaTeX math) and HTML formatting (e.g., hyperlinks) are removed. Students can view all of this content when they open the announcement or inbox message in UVACanvas.

I sent an inbox message to my course, but it did not go to all my students. How do I send to all students in my course?

To validate who received your inbox message, you can view the message in your Sent mail folder.

To send a message to the entire class:

1. Select Compose.
2. Select the name of the course, e.g. Intro Management Consulting.
3. Select the Address book icon to the right of the "To:" line, or type All to send to all in class.
4. Select All in [course name].

Tip: When you have the menu with the role, section, or group to send to open, if you hover your mouse somewhere else on the page, or use the down arrow key on your keyboard to select a different role or section temporarily, you can also see the number of recipients to the right of the role, section, or group within the drop-down menu. This can help tell you if selecting that option will send to the right set of recipients as opposed to a smaller number of people.

Email 

(Using an email account, like Outlook, to send a message to a class email list.)

How do I email students in my course from Outlook?

To send a message to the whole class or group from an email account like Outlook, you will need to create and maintain an email list based on the course roster using a tool like Outlook Contact Groups or Sympa.