Canvas ‘Message Students Who’ | Tech Teaching Tips from Timothy Corvidae

Timothy Corvidae (he/him), Instructional Designer at the Washington Center, brings a range of experience in curriculum design, instruction, and facilitation. Check out his full bio on our website and connect for further conversations on online teaching at Evergreen.

As we barrel toward the end of the quarter, here’s a Canvas feature that could save you some time. Do you find yourself scrolling through your Canvas Gradebook, looking at the variety of students who haven’t submitted a different variety of assignments, wondering how to cajole them all to successfully cross the finish line? Canvas provides a way to reach out efficiently. 

With the Message Students Who feature, you can craft specific messages and send them only to the students they apply to. This is most useful to remind students who haven’t submitted an assignment yet, or students who scored lower than a certain number of points on an assignment (I know, I know, we don’t grade. But some of us use numbers as indicators of completion. We’re working with Canvas’s limited worldview.).  You can also communicate with students whose assignments you haven’t had a chance to grade yet, just to let them know what’s up. And if some students scored more than a certain point value, you can message those students to give them kudos, or to provide class-level feedback to students who are finished with an assignment, but not to those who haven’t done it yet. 

Here’s the step by step guide to Message Students Who, straight from the makers of Canvas.