How to handle Bullying in Canvas

[BradMoser]

I am a new admin of Canvas and we recently had a question come up about possible bullying incident inside of Canvas. I don't have more details yet and I wanted to start gathering your thoughts and ideas and process for monitoring and or dealing with such issues.

My thoughts right now are to ensure our principals have appropriate access and knowledge on how to monitor student interactions.

My Question:

Is there anything else I could or should be doing to help address bullying types of issues with Canvas? Is there a report in Canvas that will give me the necessary information?

[brueckert]

Hi  @BradMoser 

I think a well developed Digital Citizenship curriculum is needed these days and it needs to be delivered early; once they're in high school, many of their digital habits have already been formed and it can be difficult to change (anecdotally speaking). Canvas can be an excellent tool to deliver this type of curriculum using activities and badges in Modules. I wish I had a good example to point you to, but hopefully someone will chime in with some resources. If you haven't read Mike Ribble's Digital Citizenship in Schools, this is a must. Appropriate online communication is a learned skill and shouldn't be taken for granted, especially if students in the lower grades are exposed to technology on a regular basis.

You do have the ability as a Canvas Admin to pull conversation information using the API. Unfortunately if the conversations have been deleted, I don't think there's much that can be done, though someone please correct me if I'm wrong. Are you able to share more information about the mechanism for how the bullying occurred without breaking confidentiality?

[stephanie_pope]

I completely agree with  @brueckert ​. Developing foundational digital citizenship skills is similar to learning the concept of "right and wrong" in elementary school- this has to be taught. I haven't read the book- thank you for mentioning it. I would think the concept of the digital footprint would be included in the text. Understanding your digital footprint helps build value, impact, and potential consequences on the internet. It can build and lead to bigger discussion about empathy and technology. Great discussion- I'm wondering how elementary school handle this topic.

Stephanie

[BradMoser]

 @brueckert , thanks for the reply. I agree and would love to see a nice Digital Citizenship course setup. I am thinking there are plenty of open and free resources from CommonSense and NetSmartz that can make this happen. I wish CommonSense could put something together like they do for NearPod lessons​.

I am an Admin and I am not totally sure how to pull those conversations using the API? How would I do that? I can also reach out to my Canvas Success partner, Deactivated user.

The mechanism for bullying was the Conversation tool inside Canvas. 

[brueckert]

Hi  @BradMoser 

In looking again at the API documentation, I don't think there's a way to get deleted conversations back so it wouldn't really be useful. As an admin though, you can just masquerade as either of the parties involved and look in their respective inboxes to get the screenshots you need so long as they haven't deleted the suspect conversations.

I'm a fan of Common Sense and the materials they've released on digital citizenship. Our Middle School Instructional Tech Coordinator created modules in Canvas based on some of their lessons. Our problem(s) however, is finding a place to put it in the curriculum, as well as prepping faculty to be able to successfully deliver it. No one wants to sacrifice content to teach lessons on DigCit; and if you force it on them from administration, you'll get half-hearted (nicer way of saying it) and ineffective lesson delivery. The only solution is either a required additional class, or folding it into existing curriculum, which can be very difficult - even at the middle school level and especially at the upper school level.

Our talks on DigCit have stalled since last year. We attempted to create a scope and sequence based on a variety of sources, but it's been set aside. While needed, our attentions have unfortunately been diverted to other pressing matters. This is really cynical to say, but I'm sure interest will spark again once we have another DigCit related issue pop up. Last year it was the YikYak app, who knows what will happen next?