A knowledge base article about Students Getting Started: Communicate and Collaborate provided by the UC Berkeley IT Service Hub - Knowledge Portal
You have several ways of communicating with your instructors and peers within bCourses for different purposes. Refer to the resources below to learn how you can use each tool for interacting and keeping connected with others when you are not in class.
The Inbox is a messaging tool used to communicate with a course, a group, an individual student, or a group of students. You can use the Inbox to communicate with others in your course, including your instructor.
Discussions provide a built-in system for class conversations. Discussions support interactive communication for individuals, full classes, and groups. The Discussion Index page allows you to view all the discussions within a course, as well as participate in course and group discussions.
Groups are a small version of a course and used as a collaborative tool where a minimum of two students can work together on group projects and assignments.
Collaborations allow multiple users to work together on the same document at the same time. Collaborative documents are saved in real-time, meaning a change made by any of its users is immediately visible to everyone.
The Chat tool in Canvas allows students and teachers to interact in real time.