Adding Reminders to your Students' To-Do Lists

Assign a due date to a Canvas assignment, and students will see a reminder for it. You can do this even if you're not accepting the work online Links to an external site.. This reminder appears on the student to-do list, course syllabus page, and Canvas calendar.

Here are two ways to create these kinds of reminders in Canvas:

1. Create a "not graded" Canvas assignment: Title it something like "Read Ch. 1" or "Read Learning Guide 1." Canvas will add a reminder to student to-do lists, calendars, and syllabus pages. If you choose "not graded," this assignment won't go into your gradebook.
2. Create a Calendar Event: Create an event in your Canvas calendar and associate it with your class. You can title this something like "Read Ch. 1" or "Read Learning Guide 1." It will add itself to the student's to-do list, calendar, and syllabus page.

Here's a short video which shows how you can do both of these things:

Other Reminder Options

There are other ways to remind students as well. For example:

• Canvas Announcements: You can use these to reach out to students at the beginning of each week (or at the end). You can also add the most recent announcements to the top of the home page. This makes them an excellent tool for snow days or emergencies, as they also notify the student inboxes. Finally, they also appear on the student to-do list (though they don't appear on the calendar).
• Canvas Pages: Canvas pages are excellent for creating learning guides. You can build a page telling students what skills they'll learn and what they'll complete that week. You can add this to a module, and you can add it to the student's to-do list and calendar. Unfortunately, the "add to student's to-do" feature for Canvas pages doesn't work with a mobile view yet.