The easiest way to communicate with individual students is to use the Canvas Inbox email function. It is recommended that you use this as your default channel. However, if you need to talk to a student about more personal or sensitive topics, or if they request this themselves, it may be preferable to have such a conversation over Zoom or Teams (see below).

Instructions on how to use the Inbox

SpeedGrader

If your students submitted their individual assignments online in Canvas, you can use SpeedGrader to add inline feedback to the document as well as general comments.

Instructions on how to use SpeedGrader

Private meetings with Zoom in Canvas

Zoom is a conferencing tool that is also used for teaching. In addition, it may be used for one-on-one student support and supervision. You can start Zoom conferences from within Canvas. We have a great step by step guide on Using Zoom-in-Canvas for Teaching, explaining how to download and install Zoom, how to start Zoom conferences from your Canvas course, and how to use it to host your tutorials. There is even a zoom an outlook plugin that makes scheduling a zoom meeting a one-click action.

Step-by-step guide: Zoom in Canvas for teaching

Teams

Teams is also available for all UvA teachers. The conferencing functionality of Teams can also be used for one-on-one meetings with students. The outlook integration also makes planning a meeting a one-click action.

Information on MS Teams can be found here

Further ideas

Further easily implementable ideas about communicating with students may be found in the Time Savers section of the TLC Central page. Some of these directly refer to or are applicable to online communication.

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