Can any one tell me if it is possible to suspend messaging on a student? Or make it possible for the student to only message the teacher? I have looked through the guides, but have found nothing about turning it off or suspending it.
Rachel, you cannot suspend messaging for an individual student. Students' ability to send messages to other students or to the entire class is a permission that is tied to the student role. "Send messages to individual course members" and "Send messages to the entire class" can be disabled in Permissions, but must be done so at the account level and would apply to all users in the student role.
Here's a guide that explains how to change your course level permissions if you are interested - How do I set permissions for a course-level role in an account?
I also need to find a way to stop students from using canvas to contact other students in the class. First, it's not their business to know the names & be able to contact others in the class. There are expectations of privacy (remember: we can't post the entire class list to the wall outside our door any more -- for decades now -- b/c it's a violation of FERPA). Second, in large enrollment classes the possibility of harassment/stalking is there. Third, we had a student use this feature to spam all students in his classes to offer a commercial opportunity and students should be protected from that sort of spam.
but that seemed to be for administrators not instructors.
Martha, as I explained to Rachel Emenhiser earlier, the permission that allows students to message all students and to contact individual students in the course via the Canvas Inbox is set at the admin level, and this decision has to be made by the school. I do not believe there is any way to set those permissions for individual teachers or courses. If you'd like these permissions turned off, please contact your school's Canvas admin so they can evaluate whether they want to turn them off for all students.
And, while I don't profess to be a FERPA expert, I have been adhering to FERPA for a long time, and I don't believe that FERPA prohibits us from showing students the names of other students in the class. My understanding is that what FERPA prohibits is hanging a class list with grades on it outside our doors, or to publicly provide a list of personal identifying information (addresses, phone numbers, and the like). It's inherent in online learning that all students will be able to see the names of all other students in the class--online discussions being a prime example--but of course, they won't be able to see other students' grades, because that would indeed run afoul of FERPA.
If you feel this should be a permission that can be set at the course level, please consider voting for this feature idea: Ability to restrict "Send messages to individual course members" at the course level At this writing, it has more downvotes than upvotes, so if you feel strongly about this, you might want to promote it amongst your colleagues.
Although it is true that student permissions are set at an account level, if this is a problem with a specific student and may be a problem for other specific students, it would be possible for an admin to set up a separate course level role based on the student role for that problem person. You could then put all of your normal students in the normal student role, put this student in the 'correction student' role that has the permission to email students turned off until they reform their behavior? They will still be able to email their teacher, just not other students.
That is what we did in a previous life with a different LMS. I don't see any reason it should work in Canvas too.
If you think that students shouldn't be able to contact other students then you need to talk to your school administration. We have student to student conversations turned off partly because if they need to connect with another student we want them to use their student email (that has a filter and check system) and because Canvas doesn't have a filter system to flag those conversations that are inappropriate.
We do ask that students initiate the conversation with teachers via Canvas because of the analytic's that we can gather.
So Rachel you need to have a conversation with your school administrators and the Canvas administrators to discuss if the policy should be changed for your institution. And Martha it looks like your school needs to add something to their handbook about using Canvas or school issues email account for promotional/commercial purposes; then consequences can be handed out for those that break the rules around that.
Stefanie Sanders: If we move a student into their own single section in the same course, are they still able to message the other students in the course? Or are they restricted to only sending messages to students in their section? Might be a little complicated, but it would be a possible workaround for this type of scenario maybe??
I searched for this issue with renewed interest today because we have a student who has been soliciting other students in his course via Canvas messages. We cannot disable all students' Inbox use system wide just to deal with this one problem, so I'm looking for other ways to handle it. I might have to resort to using Amanda Sara Bass method of creating a new student user role - good one Amanda!
Jacci, I haven't actually employed Amanda Sara Bass's innovative workaround myself. It's my understanding that moving a problem student into a different course or changing the student's role might work, but that Canvas permissions aren't so granular that they extend to sections within a course. Specifically, I just looked at permissions at the Admin level, and these are the two that pertain here: Send messages to individual course members and Send messages to the entire class (and "entire class" implies "all sections"; there's no separate permission restricting a student to messaging within a specific section). So placing a student within a separate section, without changing the student's role to the aforementioned custom role, wouldn't have an effect, as far as I can tell. I'd be happy to stand corrected if anyone else has direct experience with this.
Re: Disabling conversations in a course, is it possible?