Making Changes Without Canvas Notifying Students?

[natsmy]

What settings do I need to change, or what do I need to do so Canvas does not send out notifications when I make changes to things?  Obviously, things like Announcements I want all students to see and want them to receive a notification of, but when, for example, I give an exemption to one student to do something special, and I make those changes on Canvas, it blasts it out to every student so they know.  This should be the right of the instructor to make those decisions and it should be between the individual student and instructor, not to the knowledge of everyone in the class due to extenuating circumstances that others do not need to be privy of.  Or, if I just update a page, it sends an announcement.  These excess announcements are not necessary for students -- think how many they are getting from me times how many classes they have - they must be going crazy from trying to read all of the announcements! 

Is there any workaround for this?

Thanks!

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello there, @natsmy ...

Generally speaking, notifications of things that happen in Canvas are controlled by the end user.  This means that you can set your own notification settings, and your students can set their own notification settings, too, depending on how and when they want to be notified about various things in Canvas.  You cannot set notification settings for your students.  This is something that they would need to do on their own.  Here are a couple Guides:

• How do I set my Canvas notification preferences as a student?
• How do I set my Canvas notification preferences as an instructor?

For "Pages" content, there is an option you can select when creating/edit a content page to "Notify users that this content has changed".  I'm not sure if you use this option or not, but it might be something to investigate on your end.  This is covered in the Guide, How do I create a new page in a course? - Canvas Community, under the section "Edit Page Settings".

Hope this helps a bit.  Sing out if you have any other questions about this...thank you!  Take care, and be well.

[natsmy]

I understand what you are saying, but making changes in the notification, as you say, only affects MY notifications - that's not what I need. And I NEVER select "notify students that the page has changed" - NEVER, yet it always does.  It's quite frustrating and unnecessary to me.

[LauraOliver1]

I am having the same issue. It is awful not to be able to edit the course without Canvas sending out an email blast! Has a workaround been updated as of 8/2022?

[peitzu_tsai]

I'm having the same issue, even when not selecting notifying student of the change, the students always receives notification about the change - the only good side is I now triple check things before publishing/posting them.

I also agree with the needed option of not notifying all students when accommodation/extension is made for individuals with excuse or disability. I never dare change assignment/quiz deadlines for those individuals on Canvas out of fear that the notification would go out to the whole class as it does for the other changes. Students and I had to mark our own calendars as reminders to not count them as late submissions, making it challenging to track things and the automatic deduction for late assignments useless when I can't set the correct deadlines for all students.

[LauraOliver1]

Instructors should be able to EDIT their course material without student's receiving every.single.update. 

Even the option to "Not notify" students Does NOT WORK. 

[KyleBrookman]

Canvas clearly hates instructors with a passion. I don't understand why these people are in this business.

[dspiel]

I'm going to test today and haven't seen it offered as an option, but if you unpublish, make changes and then publish again would that limit notification?

[KathyHayes]

I know this thread is old but Actually, ran into this today and no, unpublishing the content making the change and then publishing it again actually triggers the notification if they have turned the setting on to notify them of content changes in the course. If you never trigger the publish button but make changes they DON'T get a notification...a little confusing.

[paul_chen]

I agree with the frustration expressed in the earlier posts.  I understand that Canvas wants transparency btwn. instructors and students, but I wish I could hide from my students when I'm doing work late at night on Canvas (like when constructions workers are working at night when there's little traffic). 

Again, I agree with the others above, that notifying students of nearly every revision/edit I make on Canvas is infuriating.