Set New Course-Level Notification Preferences in Canvas

Starting October 17, the General Notifications interface has been updated to match the design of Course-Level Notifications. You will also have the ability to include or hide scores in your email notifications. 

This builds on the course level notifications that rolled out from July 18, which gave you the ability to customize notifications for individual Canvas courses. This feature will allow you to customize course notifications to fit your course preferences depending on importance or urgency. 

By default, Canvas includes a certain set of notification preferences you can receive for your courses. The new Course-Level Notification feature allows you to change these default settings and tailor your notification preferences and communication channels for each of your courses.

Please note: Course-Level Notification settings only apply to the course in which they are set. However, changing the notification preference for a course will override your General Notification preferences as set in your Account Settings, including any future changes you make. You must continue to manage that notification type within your course.

To receive course notifications, you must first set Canvas Notification preferences for your Canvas Account.

 

How are Course-Level Notifications different from General Notifications?

The notification options haven’t changed, but now you can choose different options on a course-by-course level.

Both General Notifications and Course-Level Notifications display the following notification types:

  • Course Activities (such as due dates, announcements, and posted grades)
  • Discussions (such as a new Discussion topic in a course)
  • Scheduling (such as new items in a course calendar

However, General Notifications apply across all of your current courses, whereas Course-Level Notifications give you the opportunity to choose which courses you want to receive notifications from.

Course-Level Notifications, like General Notifications, are easy to adjust. You can select which notifications you want to receive from a course, how often you want to receive notifications, or disable notifications for the course entirely (this is not recommended).

You can view the different notification options and their descriptions by clicking on the course notification icons in a Course Notification Settings page (as illustrated in Step 4, below).

 

How do I open and enable Course-Level Notification Preferences in Canvas?

You can manage notifications for a single course through the Course Notification Settings page.

1. In Global Navigation, click the Courses link [1], then click the name of the individual course you would like to set notification preferences for [2].

 

2. In the course home page sidebar, click View Course Notifications. This will take you to the Course Notification Settings page.

 

3. Click the Enable Notifications toggle to manage your course notification settings. When notifications are enabled for the course, the toggle displays a checkmark icon [1]. When notifications are disabled for the course, the toggle displays an X icon [2].

 

4. To manage notifications for specific course features, click the icon for the notification method [1]. You can select how often you want to receive notifications for the course. Options include Notify immediately [2], Daily summary [3], Weekly summary [4], or Notifications off [5].

 

5. On your course home page, the View Course Notifications button icon displays if course notifications are enabled [1] or disabled [2].

 

For more information about setting up Canvas notifications for a single course, please visit this Canvas guide of Course-Level Notifications.

 

What should I be aware of when setting Course-Level Notifications?

Here’s some things to be aware of when setting individual Course-Level Notification preferences.

General Notifications do not change

The General Notifications page (accessed through your Canvas Account Settings) does not change when you change your Course-Level Notifications, or show whether any course-level settings have been changed.

This means the option selected on your General Notifications page does not apply to any courses where you have changed the default notification settings.

Once a notification preference is changed in a course, it will override your General Notification settings and can only be changed within that course.

General Notifications and Course-Level Notifications share the same interface 

The user-level General Notifications page has been updated to match the design of the Course-Level Notifications page. Both General Notifications and Course Notifications only show which notification option is currently set 

You can view the different notification options and their descriptions by clicking the notification icons in the relevant Notification Settings page (as illustrated in Step 4, above). 

Scores can be enabled or disabled on email notifications 

You can now choose to receive email notifications for grading in a course, by enabling grading notifications under Course Activities in your Course-Level Notification preferences. Note that enabling this option will include scores in email notifications about grades.

If your email is not aUBC email this means that sensitive content involving scores can be sent outside of Canada. 

Notifications must be set for each method of contact

If you have multiple email addresses or methods of contact listed under your Canvas account, you will need to manage notifications for each one individually.

Visit the Canvas Guides to learn how to add or remove an additional email address to your Canvas account, or to learn how to add or remove other contact methods to your Canvas account.

 

 

 

Photo credit to Paul H. Joseph / UBC Brand & Marketing