Communication

An example communication plan template, outlining weekly messages to students across different channels. It details the timing, content, and target audience for announcements, reminders, and follow-ups, utilising various communication methods such as Canvas announcements, discussion boards, and video.

Table reproduced¹ and licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Use Canvas Announcements to communicate to your entire cohort, or if you have used Canvas Groups to group your students, use Announcements within the Group to target these students. Go to the Group homepage first before posting the announcement.

If you want to post an announcement to a particular lecture, lab or tutorial stream, or students who are approved to study remotely, you can message them separately. Read about how course streams are identified through Canvas Sections and how to post a targeted announcement to them.

To communicate with individual students as needed, use the Inbox functionality in Canvas (see the People tab and click the mail icon). You can also use a context card to contact a student directly.

Note:

• Savvy students within the group will also be able to post announcements, but they will only be posted to the group.
• Make sure students have set their Canvas notifications settings to accept Announcements and Conversations.
• Ask students to ensure their University email account is forwarding to their personal email address (for those who prefer to use personal email only).

Delayed posting functionality to avoid overwhelming students with announcements

Students may experience information overload, especially if they are receiving announcements at all times of the day and night.

While teaching staff often can only deal with these in the evenings/nights, it is good to reinforce that we are not expecting students to be studying 24/7, and that we acknowledge they have other pressures on their time.

Use the Canvas’ functionality of ‘delay posting’:

• Tick Delay posting found in ‘Options’ immediately above the SAVE button.
• This allows you to write announcements at any time and send it to students at a later date/time (for example, write it on a Friday night but delay sending it until Monday morning).

Canvas Discussions can be used as an online equivalent to tutorials and collaborative work. This is a good option for holding an asynchronous interaction.

• Start the discussion by introducing yourself, using this introduction template, and encourage your students to introduce themselves.
• Communicate weekly learning objectives, content, readings and resources.
• Provide a weekly to-do list for students.
• Provide students with a link to the Canvas guide.

Discussions can be text based or use multimedia. Using the Canvas Rich Content Editor, you and your students can record and upload video or audio clips to the discussion. This may be especially good for language courses.

If you want to give a student direct feedback on their discussion without posting a comment (which all students in the same discussion can see), make the discussion a graded discussion and use the feedback mechanisms within SpeedGrader to give individual feedback.

Other advantages of Canvas Discussions:

• Best for course dialogue.*
• Integrated with Canvas.
• Allows for group and graded discussions.

* Students engage in debate, discussion, critical discourse, and collaboration.

Online asynchronous discussion gives teaching staff and students a space to actively engage with the course and each other.

At their best, such discussions:

• Increase student-student interaction.
• Establish a learning relationship between the teacher and student.
• Support and grow confidence, competence, and autonomy.
• Increase critical engagement with the contents of the course.
• Open new channels for fast informal feedback.
• Build a genuine learning community that is not bound by the confines of the physical classroom.

For teaching staff, online discussions can:

• Reduce time spent addressing common questions and misunderstandings.
• Provide feedback on how students are engaging with the course.
• Identify knowledge gaps or areas for improvement in how the course is taught.

However, to realise these benefits, online discussions must be purposefully designed, framed, and facilitated. An unplanned or unattended discussion forum is unlikely to be effective.

In order to maximise the positive effects, include ways to:

• Establish and maintain the discussion forum as a safe and inclusive space.
• Clearly communicate what the students can expect from the discussion.
• Manage the volume of activity on the discussion.

When you start your class discussion, consider drawing students’ attention to the page on Learning Essentials called communicating respectfully and constructively.

The Piazza discussion tool is integrated with Canvas and can be used as an alternative to Canvas’ built-in Discussions. One of the main differences with Piazza is that students can edit their posts and post anonymously. This obviously has its pros and cons depending on where you’re pitching the discussion; always remind students (up-front) about the rules of engagement.

Add Piazza to your Canvas course menu from the Canvas Settings > Navigation options.

Some advantages

• Good for course questions and answers (Q+A).*
• Most effective with larger cohorts (>50).
• Includes features for managing high response volumes.

* Students ask, answer, and share questions about the content or management of the course.

Disadvantages

• Students are able to sign up as an instructor in your Piazza discussion. To avoid this, disable the self-signup feature (under the Manage Class setting).
  
• Students who are not part of your class are able to search for and sign up to your Piazza discussions. To avoid this, add an access code to the Piazza discussion (under the Manage Class setting). Either share the access code with your class or keep it secret and manually enrol each student.
  

See also

The University of Sydney also provides a comparison between Piazza and Canvas Discussions.

Message students who have not yet submitted their assignment. Use your discretion whether this is a timely reminder in advance and/or after the deadline.