Announcements And Quickmail
Announcements and Quickmail are two useful ways to communicate with your students. Below you will find instructions for and information about both.
Announcements
Every participant in the course is automatically subscribed to the Announcements forum. This means that when you make a post everyone gets an email with the content of the post. This is a good place for items that may need to be referenced later (e.g. important dates, updates to your syllabus, room change, etc.). Students are unable to post to this special forum.
Quickmail
The Quickmail block is a great way to contact your students. It uses the same list of students you see under the Participants list and keeps a record of each message you send, as well as recipients. Except in rare instances, the students' Acadia email addresses will be used, so it is good to remind them of their responsibility for checking their email. The Service Desk can help them with any questions they have regarding email setup.
The Quickmail block is in the block drawer on the right side of the page (usually near the top).
If you don't see the blocks on the right side of your page, click on the Open block drawer button near the top right of your page.
Quickmail has many options, but we'll stick to the basics for now.
Composing a New Email Message
Click on the Compose Course Message link in the Quickmail block in your block drawer on the right side of the page.
The From field will automagically fill in your email address. The To field initially states No included recipients. Recipients are added by clicking on the Who should receive this message dropdown list. In most cases, you will want to select All in course.
There are also options for selecting everyone with a certain role (e.g. Student), those in a certain group, or individual students. As you add recipients, you will see them appear to the right of To. Note that this dropdown list is also searchable. If a recipient option is mistakenly added, it can be removed by clicking on that selection.
If you need to exclude certain people, roles, or groups from the recipients list (maybe you are planning a surprise party for your TA), the process is the same using the Who should NOT receive this message searchable dropdown list in the Exclude area.
Fill in the Subject field and Body of the message appropriately. If you need to copy the message to someone not in your course (e.g. Admin Assistant, Dean), enter as many as you like, separated by commas, in the Additional emails box.
You can attach files to your email message. Add your files in the Attached files area. Any files you attach will be uploaded to your course with a link included in the message for download.
There is an option to schedule your email. If you don't want your students to know you are writing at 3 in the morning, or if you want the bad news to go out after you are safely on vacation in Cuba, you can schedule when the message gets delivered by using the Send at option.
If you feel you may need to cool down and drink a coffee before you rewrite your email in a way that will not involve a visit to your department head's office, or if you just don't have time to finish it now, click on the Save Draft button. (You can access your draft(s) by clicking on the View Drafts link in the Quickmail block.) Otherwise just hit the good ol' Send Message button.
