If Canvas Chat is enabled, can students have private conversations amongst themselves?

unknown

Does enabling the chat feature on canvas allow students to initiate their own private chat conversations amongst themselves that cannot be seen by the teacher? I am an instructor and don't have a way of checking myself to get an answer to this question.

There have been major issues in the past at my school with students on a different chatting platform. They were able to initiate their own chat groups composed of only students. At one point, there was an extremely large group of students engaged in highly inappropriate conversation. The school discovered this was happening when a staff member accidentally got added to the group. So I'm trying to figure out if this scenario would even be possible with canvas chat?

Kristin Lundstrum

Hi @kevinmadden -

As included in What is Chat? :

Chats cannot be limited to specific students.

Instructors can use the chat tool to allow students to contact them when online, create virtual office hours, conduct group discussions or study sessions.

All users in the course can also access the chat history.

 

With that, anyone who happens to be online can chat. However, the history will be available to all people. As the instructor, you'd be the only one able to delete a message. I hope this helps!