UPDATE: Unfortunately, the video chat service provided in Canvas was turned off in Fall 2012. It has now been replaced with a Text Chat that is built in to Canvas, but no video.


Can your LMS do this? What did student have to do to join me? Click on the Chat button, then click to share their webcam. Seamless. This is what I love about Instructure Canvas. There are no extra accounts to set up, no appointments to schedule, and I don’t have to be tech support to get the technology working. Some of my students were using the built-in webcams on their computers for the very first time. The look of surprise when the technology just started working was priceless (it does ask them before activating the camera).

You can click on the image to see a larger view.

Four of us meet in the Tinychat plugin to Instructure Canvas for an online help session in Online Calculus.

By the way, SAVI = Synchronous Audio Visual Interaction (a term we coined at LAK 2012).