Communicating with Your Students While Teaching Remotely

Communicate via Email

Do not make your students wait in uncertainty longer than needed. Once you've made your plan, communicate expectations for your course to students before the semester starts. You cannot use Canvas announcements to communicate with your students before the semester starts, so you will need to email your students outside of Canvas.

CIDI has provided a tool to help you email your students at their preferred email addresses from your email client.

  1. In your Canvas course, click on People.
  2. At the top of the page, click the Email All Students button.
    Buttons at the top of a Canvas course People page including Student Cards, email all students, and download class roster.
  3. Your email client will open with a new message and all of your students' email addresses will appear in the BCC field.
  4. Type your email and hit Send.

Alternatively, you can download your class roster and copy/paste email addresses into the BCC field of your email client. You can also use the downloaded list to email students individually using tools like Microsoft Word mail merge.

Communicate via Canvas Announcements

You might need to cancel your live class and use alternative means to provide information to your students and allow them the opportunity to ask questions. One of the easiest ways to do this is using Canvas Announcements. The following video will walk you through the steps below.

1

Log in to Canvas at https://usu.instructure.com with your A-number and strong password

 
2

Click on the title of your class

 
3

Click on Announcements on the course navigation on the left-hand side of the course

(If you haven’t added any announcements there will be a picture of an eye with a line through it to show that it is not visible to students. After you add an announcement, that link will become visible to students and the eye icon will disappear.)

 
4

Click on + Announcement to add a new announcement

 
5

Click Save when you have made all appropriate selections

Important! Be sure to publish the Canvas course by clicking on the Home link on the left-hand navigation, then clicking on the Publish button so that students can see what you have added.

What if the email addresses open in the wrong email client?

If your students' email addresses open in the wrong email client, you can select the addresses and copy and paste them into your preferred email client (e.g. Outlook), or you can use the following sources to change your default email client.

Allow students to view your course before the start of the semester

  1. Click on Settings then un-check the option labeled Restrict students from viewing this course before the start date. Then click on Update Course Details.
  2. Publish the course by going to the course Home page and clicking Publish.

With this done, students WILL be able to:

  • send and receive messages sent through the Inbox (Canvas mail)
  • view the course syllabus page
  • view published announcements
  • see published, available assignments
    (If you want some assignments to not be visible you can unpublish them, or add an availability date of a future date.)
  • view published pages, files, and modules

Until the first day of the semester, students WILL NOT be able to:

  • submit assignments
  • post to discussion boards
  • receive notifications of announcements
  • view unpublished content or content within unpublished modules