Communications

Consider using multiple means of communication methods, such as Announcements and email to keep students informed of what’s happening in your course. For more information about Canvas Announcements, visit Getting Started with Announcements.

We also recommend setting up your own Notifications for your Canvas course, and encouraging your students to do the same. This will help to ensure all participants are aware of course updates. For more information about Canvas Notifications, visit Managing Notifications.

When communicating with students in a course, it’s important to keep accessibility in mind in regards to both the language you use and how you type these communications. Whether it’s a class Announcement or through a Discussion, your written communications with students should demonstrate consistent principles.

To help create clear communication in your course, here are a few things you can try:

• Use succinct and unambiguous/literal language.
  • Tools such as Hemingway Editor can help. 
• Take care to explain all acronyms, abbreviations, jargon, slang, and metaphors that you use.
• When sharing words or names that have unique or complex pronunciations, consider sharing the pronunciation after the word.
• Use consistent titles and names for assignments and course materials.
  • Example: If you refer to an assignment as the “Article 3 Discussion” in the syllabus document, be sure to refer to it as “Article 3 Discussion” in all communications with students.
• Use shorter blocks of text when possible.
  • Example: Limit yourself to approximately 2-4 sentences per paragraph, line lengths of about 50-120 characters, and at least 1.5 line spacing.
  • Please note: Going a little over or under these guidelines may be fine depending on the subject matter, as well as the device and software you’re using.
• If possible, avoid using only colors to distinguish between different elements when giving instructions.
  • Example: Instead of writing “click the blue button”, you can write “click the submit button” or even “click the blue submit button”.

Here are a few tools you can use to draft clear and succinct instructions and guidelines:

• Grammarly
• Hemingway Editor

Clear communication in a course benefits all learners, but it can specifically help (and may be required for) learners who:

• Have a memory barrier.
• Have difficulty decoding uncommon words and phrases.
• Struggle with nonliteral word usage.
• Have difficulty maintaining focus and/or have an increased chance of getting distracted.
• Are English language learners.

These are just a few examples where individuals may benefit from these strategies – there are many more.