How Can Students Respond to my Canvas Announcements?

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We talk a lot about Canvas announcements because they’re such a convenient way to get information out to your entire class. Today, we’re looking at another aspect of announcements – how to handle a situation when you want students to easily be able to respond to what you send out and ask questions or add comments.

Canvas makes this simple. When you’re creating an announcement, check the “Allow users to comment” box under the “Options” heading. Canvas will then remember that you checked the box and keep it checked in the future. If you uncheck that box to not allow users to comment, Canvas will likewise remember that and keep that setting as the default.

These replies are stacked under the announcement like a discussion forum. Anything the students post in response will be visible to everyone in the course, so you may want to notify them of that and to not include personal information or questions in that area.

And one last detail – once you’ve turned on announcement replies, you’ll want to make sure that you don’t miss anything your students add there. In your Canvas notification settings (click on your profile picture then “notifications”), make sure you have notifications turned on for “Announcement Created by You.” You will get a notification for the announcements you send out, but this setting also controls whether you get notifications for announcement replies.

Have questions? Please leave a comment below or send us an email at ctl@cedarville.edu.