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Canvas offers two other tools that can help communications with students.

Calendar

One of the challenges facing both students and instructors is keeping track of all of the assignments planned throughout the term. The Calendar, which is accessed from the global navigation menu on the left of each page, can help everyone stay on schedule and up to date.

528 - Calendar Overview (EN) from Canvas LMS on Vimeo.

Helpful tips about the calendar:

The Calendar is used for reminding students of graded Assignments with specific due dates. To provide students with detailed descriptions of how synchronous class time will be used, consider using Pages or customizing the Course Home Page.
The Calendar automatically syncs with other features in Canvas, such as Assignments, Syllabus, and Grades, so if you create, change, or delete the due date of an Assignment on the Calendar, it will show up in all the others and vice versa. You can change dates easily by dragging and dropping assignments from one date to another.
The Calendar in Canvas is a global feature, meaning you can see all of your assignments from all of your courses in one place. If your Calendar becomes too crowded, you can filter the number of events listed on your Calendar by selecting or deselecting courses in the Sidebar.
You can schedule appointments with students using the Calendar's Scheduler function

Conferences

529 - Conferences Overview (EN) from Canvas LMS on Vimeo.

Conferences are primarily used for virtual lectures, virtual office hours, and student groups.

Conferences makes it easy to conduct synchronous (real-time) lectures for all of the students in your course. Conferences allows you to broadcast real-time audio, video, demo applications on your desktop, share presentation slides, or demo any online resources. Currently, Canvas integrates with BigBlueButton.

Note: BigBlueButton can accommodate approximately 50 users in a conference at one time. A conference will remain active on Big Blue Button as long as one person is part of the conference room. When the last person leaves, the conference will conclude and all files and chats will be removed.

When would I use Conferences?

Use Conferences to:

Connect with your students for online office hours or special study sessions designed to help them prepare for a test.
Connect with your colleagues for professional development webinars.
Practice presenting online. Students can set up practice presentations in their student Groups.
Invite special guests to your classroom by adding them as a student or observer to your course.
Broadcast a live event or lecture to the students that can't be onsite.
You can also record your conferences so students can view them at a later date. Note: Recordings are automatically deleted 14 days after the conference ends.