I find it totally understandable for teachers to be cautious with the information they share in their emails to me in requesting help with their Canvas courses. In higher education, we are bombarded with reminders, training, reminders, admonishments, reminders, threats, and warnings to not to reveal any information that would be a FERPA violation or would compromise Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Naturally, it’s reasonable for a teacher to email something along these lines:
Hi Canvas Admin,
I have a course where two students need to be reassigned a due date for an assignment. These students needs to be able to submit their essay later than other students in their class. Can you help?
Thanks,
Professor LastName
Why yes, I can help! And I’m happy to do so. As an “account admin” with my university’s Canvas Learning Management System I can see all courses, see all personnel Canvas accounts, and can masquerade/act-as any person in the LMS. As I explained in an earlier post, Canvas Admins like me have superpowers that we use for good, not evil.
Unfortunately, some professional technologists not well versed in relating with human beings will respond to the above request with:
I need more details.
Thanks,
-Sent from my iPhone
Some techs will be even less relational, often based on management policy, and will respond with something like:
You need to create a ticket by clicking this link.
Canvas Support
I firmly believe teachers, heck…ALL customers, should come to expect a kinder and more personalized response from their tech support. Like this:
Hi [FirstName of Professor LastName],
I’m happy to help [restate the request] get your students’ assignment due date extended. Would you share with me the name of your course, the assignment, and the student(s) you are referring to, please? It shouldn’t take me that long to help.
Thanks very much,
Chris
Fun fact: Once I’m provided with specific information, it take that long for me to extend a due date for students in a course assignment, especially when I’m caffeinated!
While it isn’t widely discussed, it is important to know a Canvas Admin like me is entrusted with a great deal of sensitive information while maintaining the data integrity of the university LMS…as well as supporting all my faculty clients with potentially-confidential matters. We will be able to help teachers get their course request resolved quicker if we can have a few more details in the originating email.
-Chris