Is there a way to force notifications to send immediately?

[awashington06]

Hi,

We are new to Canvas and will be going live in the Fall. However, instructors are complaining about students having the ability to manage class notifications. Is there a way for an instructor to enforce notifications to be delivered immediately for their course or can I do it at the root account? I am the LMS admin. 

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Hi @awashington06 ...

I seem to recall reading comments somewhere here in the Community a long while back there *might* be a way to enable immediate notifications for students through some back-end coding, but I am not 100% sure on this.  (I don't have a coding background to be able to show you what this code would look like.)  From the front-end UI, however, you're probably aware that notifications are configured by the individual user.  You as an admin...and instructors...cannot configure student notifications.  Every user in Canvas (admin, instructor, student, etc.) can configure his/her own notifications.  For example, if someone had added an additional e-mail address to her account, she could choose to be notified immediately to her school account of grades being posted...but only to be notified with a daily summary to her personal e-mail account.  The choice is completely up to the end user.

I hope this will be of some help to you.  If you have additional questions about this, please post as a reply...thanks!

[VPundir]

Further to @Chris_Hofer 's explanation, I wanted to share how I do it for my courses: My first announcement for any course I teach is to "Set up Canvas correctly", and explains that they should set up notifications for Announcements, Discussions and Invitations to Immediate (complete with screenshots and step-by-step directions) among a couple of other important setups. It is explained that if they don't do this, they'll miss important information. I also link this Announcement from the Welcome page. Overall, I have found good compliance, which indicates the issue is not the unwillingness on the part of students, but rather ignorance. I reckon a similar solution could be implemented on the school level.