[gucci-on-fleek]

I've never used Canvas before, but all the LMSes that I've used allow students to enable emails whenever anything is updated, including when grades are posted. This is off by default because it's often 10+ emails a day, because many teachers post notes once a day, and with 5 classes, that adds up pretty quick. I personally have it enabled because it's pretty manageable with some custom Outlook rules, but setting this up is well beyond the capabilities of most students.

[mbreese]

Canvas will send emails when grades are posted, but not what the grade is. Or at least that’s the way in the configurations I’ve seen. So, that wouldn’t help in a case where no one can access the canvas gradebook.

[trillic]

yup you just get an email saying "A new grade has been posted for EECS 420"

[skeeter2020]

...then all those clicks juice engagement and utilization numbers; why would someone want to just know their grade when they can use more clicks and custom apps to get the same info? </s>

The party line is probably something about "a lack of data security" with email, which would almost be funny given the current situation if it wasn't so stressful for those impacted...

[crazygringo]

No, students are already forced to use Canvas enough as is. This is enterprise software, it's not a consumer phone app. This is nothing to do with "engagement".

This is to do with FERPA which requires that student grades be kept private. There is a small but still a significant legal risk that someone else such as a parent or roommate could have access to a student's email. And so to avoid even the possibility of a court case, schools prefer to play it safe and display grades only to a user they can authenticate directly.

This doesn't have anything to do with common sense, it's simply about legal risk. And it's not about security in a broader sense, it's specifically about privacy FERPA legislation.

[trollbridge]

FERPA allows emailing confidential information to a student email on record if the university controls the email account. Most universities offer their own email service (and require using it) for this exact reason.

There is no more risk of access to email than there is to Canvas. They are usually secured by the same SSO, too.

However, congratulations for finding the exact dodge around implementing a useful feature. Back when I worked at a university, it was apparent we had a “toolbox” of reasons to deny requests we didn’t want to do: HIPAA, FERPA, ERISA, PCI, GLBA, Title IX, ADA.

“We can’t do that integration with student health services due to HIPAA concerns.”

“We can’t implement that sign up form due to FERPA.”

“We can’t update that site because we’d have to do so and be ADA compliant and that would cost too much.”

“Due to Dining Services’ server being in scope for PCI, we can’t run reports off of it.”

“Adding that ability to Student Affairs’ portfolio app would raise Title IX concerns.”

It was great. You had endless excuses to say why you can’t email a student their grade.

[crazygringo]

I already said it's not about common sense, it's about legal risk.

It's about edge cases like someone set up your email to forward all your emails to their account without you knowing. Or other additional situations you could imagine.

There is no benefit to not emailing grades directly, from the perspective of Instructure. There is no ulterior motive here. But universities are genuinely risk-averse and their lawyers tell them that not including the grade in the email simply shuts down one more avenue for some potential lawsuit. Which costs money to defend even if a university wins it.

This isn't some kind of "dodge". This is literally just Instructure doing what university lawyers demand.

I agree with you that the email address is generally always also controlled by the school and has the same login authentication. It doesn't matter. I told you this isn't about common sense. This is about lawyers saying that it could reduce legal risk. And that is a true thing that is coming from real lawyers. Even if you disagree with those lawyers.

And Instructure isn't going to try to disagree with lawyers for its own potential customers. It's going to give the schools what they want, which is not revealing grades via email.

It's not a "dodge."

[whyenot]

Isn't that due to FERPA related concerns?

[dotancohen]

  > setting this up is well beyond the capabilities of most students.

Setting up custom email filters is beyond the capabilities of most students? What are they learning? Where will they be qualified to work?

[metaengies]

> Where will they be qualified to work?

Going by a certain story 2 years ago, their concern should be that they're overqualified for Meta.

It doesn't help that gmail, which is the only serious direct competition to outlook, straight up doesn't do "folders" and instead goes with markers. So you can't really just put a filter that drags all the 100 low-priority alerts in what would count as a first degree abstraction of "place where things are sorted into". No, there are two layers of abstraction between point A and B of things, sorter and sorted things. The result? Muggles can't recognize the heck you're describing and refuse to even acknowledge the possibility.

[user_7832]

> It doesn't help that gmail, which is the only serious direct competition to outlook, straight up doesn't do "folders" and instead goes with markers.

While true, unless I'm mistaken, markers (I assume you're referring to tags) can be nested to provide a pseudo-folder hierarchy, and with proper filters you can remove the "inbox" tag and have the mail only show up under the specific tag.

TBH I don't fully mind it, it lets you classify an email in multiple ways (eg "See Later" as well as "Work related").

[mschild]

Tags are great but I still want my folders. Also doesn't help that the way google describes some things is unnecessarily complex or confusing. For example, removing an email from the inbox requires archiving it. In most other applications (WhatsApp, Signal, Outlook, etc) archiving usually results in the email being placed in a specific archive folder that isn't readily accessible through the UI. At least not to the same level that normal emails are.

[philamonster]

People in my work and personal life experience do not understand the concept of labels in a Google inbox and misname them folders 100% of the time. Google allows you to drag-n-drop emails "into" labels like you would files in folders conflating the issue even more as the logic to automate this behaviour with a filter isn't leveraged. Even the layout of a default inbox is setup in a way that the average user has difficulty understanding what happens when an email drops off the "front page" of their inbox.

[bitfilped]

They can be nested, the one thing I have never been able to figure out though is how to get alerts of receiving a message while also filing away in a sub folder. You get one or the other in outlook, as a result I rarely check my work email anymore cause I either get the fire hose of spam or miss everything entirety because it's going to a folder and not passing along an alert about a new message.

[swiftcoder]

Gmail still has perfectly functional filters that can be set to auto-apply a label and skip the inbox. They may be called "labels" now, but they still function just as they did when the UI called them "folders"

[GTP]

I partially solve this by using Thunderbird on my laptop. When I get emails on my smartphone (on the Gmail app), they unfortunately all go to the inbox. But the moment I open Thunderbird, it nicely organizes them for me.

[chopin]

Does Thunderbird have rules? I searched for this and didn't find them.

[GTP]

Yes, it has filters. Open it's menu (the three stacked lines on the desktop version) and you will find them there.

[dotancohen]

I use Thunderbird on both the desktop and Android. Love it.

Perhaps Outlook is difficult to configure. Thunderbird is intuitive.

[GTP]

Yes, every now and then I think I should try it on Android as well, but still have to do it. It would be great if there was the possibility to sync filters across devices, in a similar way of using your Firefox account to sync extensions. Do you know if this is possible?

[dotancohen]

I don't think it's possible.

[teiferer]

If a CS graduate can't figure out some simple gmail labels and filters then they should not be awarded that degree. Plain and simple. It's not rocket science.

[Poacher5]

And there are no other students at any college other than CS students? I'm not sure why a biologist or a literature student would need to be au fait with Google's admittedly fairly unfriendly email management setup.

[denkmoon]

Digital literacy is important to every field. Email filters are not some arcane computer science concept, they are the modern equivalent of filing physical mail into the right folder/pidgeon hole/inbox/whatever.

Biology is a great example because of just how important digital record management is to experimentation in the field.

[sillywabbit]

I don't think you've seen many biology field data sets.

[teiferer]

1. This was a response to a CS professor, so specific to CS students.

2. Yes, configuring gmail filters should be doable for anybody with a university degree. It's really not hard.

[mold_aid]

Most of my students, across all disciplines, don't have basic competence in Word or GDocs, software they've been using for years. It's weeks to teach them how to appy headings

[Daub]

I feel your pain, and my students are design students

[weird-eye-issue]

Most graduates aren't really qualified to work anywhere that they couldn't have worked before going to college in the first place.

[smcin]

You mean graduates of US colleges? Not colleges in general. Or non-technical graduates of US colleges?

[J-Kuhn]

I think they point weird-eye-issue wants to make is: Students attend college to become qualified to work.

[weird-eye-issue]

I think you completely misread my comment.

[smcin]

I understood your comment perfectly fine. I'm asking which graduates of which colleges you were referring to. It looked like you were generalizing about US HS and colleges. If so, plenty of other countries' HS and college education systems work better, so your comment doesn't extend.

[lokar]

I used LaTeX as a ugrad, it’s not that hard

[skeeter2020]

you're at the other end of the spectrum; unless you get work in academia this is not an advantange.

[lokar]

I use it to filter recruiters, if they can’t accept (a well typeset) PDF résumé, and insist on Word I know to skip them.

[trollbridge]

They only ask for Word because they plan to edit it to remove your contact info. Or worse.

[recursive]

So are you getting a lot of offers this way? Anyway, I admire your dogma.

[recursive]

Congratulations on your competence.

[sillywabbit]

It's not even standard in academia.

[poopmonster]

Depends on the discipline. I never hear of mathematicians using anything else.

[crazygringo]

You know that most students aren't computer science majors?

Have you met the average community college student who doesn't even own a laptop but does all of their work on their phone? Gmail doesn't even allow you to create or manage filters from their phone app or mobile web interface.

[fooker]

I have been using email for as long as email was a thing and I still managed to blackhole important emails with filters not too long ago.

[mschuster91]

> What are they learning?

Exactly what is in their field of study, nothing more. That's a huge part of the problems created by treating academia as a degree mill mandatory to get a job able to feed yourself instead of a place only for those truly interested in actually studying a subject.

[emodendroket]

Most people who have office jobs don't know how to do this either

[shakna]

Most managers I've met, struggle with setting up email filters, and have to ask tech support to do it for them. These students will be qualified just fine.

[gucci-on-fleek]

I'd hope/assume that any Computer Science students would be able to do this, but most Biology/Education/English/Art students probably couldn't.

I mean, anyone smart enough to attend university could probably figure it out if they really wanted to, but there are hundreds of other useful things that they could learn too. There are only so many hours in the day, and given that most students don't get that many emails, I can hardly blame them for not wanting to prioritize learning how to filter emails.

(I personally have over a hundred lines of Sieve filters, but I'm definitely not a typical student)

[jameshart]

Biologists should be more qualified than most to classify and tag email specimens.

[throwaway2037]

This is a brilliant reply. I shook my head at the original and laughed hard at your perfectly reasonable question.

It reminds me of an old joke my father used to say about jobs with virtually no interview (fast food, etc). He called it "The Mirror Test", as in if you hold a mirror up to the person, does it fog up? If yes, you are hired!

[BigTTYGothGF]

> What are they learning?

Are you suggesting that outlook wrangling be explicitly taught at the college level?

[u_fucking_dork]

Anywhere. I straight up don’t check my email at work. If people need me they have to teams message me to tell me they emailed me. Don’t have time to sift through all the bullshit generated emails. Jira, GitHub, confluence, servicenow, workday, etc. amounts to an incredible amount of junk I just can’t be bothered with.

[Scroll_Swe]

>Setting up custom email filters is beyond the capabilities of most students?

Yes. And most of the general population. They can do it once they know it exists, most people just are not aware it is a thing at all.

>What are they learning?

Here, their "major" as you say in the US. Someone in econ, biology or even CS is not going to learn Outlook rules. Maybe IT or business will have a sentence on it.

>Where will they be qualified to work?

Any office job. Any job really.

[setopt]

In my experience, it’s hard enough to make students check their school email in the first place. Let alone filter it.

[lokar]

As a ugrad, and later a PhD student teaching, everything is explained the first day. If you can figure it out you just fail the class (or go to office hrs to get help, etc).

[setopt]

As an associate professor, I do explain things the first day, but I am certainly not permitted to fail students as a consequence of not checking their email daily.

Even if they didn’t hand in an assignment at all, without any reason provided, I’m required by regulation to offer them a second chance to pass that assignment.

The students’ rights are quite strong here (Northern Europe), which I generally support, but it has some downsides.

[lokar]

Interesting. I remember very strict rules on turning in programming assignments (as a student, and later TA). On time, printed properly, in a specific envelope, labeled as specified in the right location.

[throawayonthe]

it's MS software, i think it's inanely difficult

[butlike]

Didn't you hear? Chat apps and iMessage (SMS included) is the new email.

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