Communicating with Students

The Announcements Forum is automatically created for every Moodle course. This is a special forum that allows instructors to send out general news and announcements to anyone enrolled in their Moodle course. The Announcements Forum is a forced subscription for all enrolled students by default, but it is possible for students to unsubscribe or filter the announcement emails. The instructor will not receive an email after the announcement is sent, but the postings history is viewable within the forum activity. Posts by the Teacher to the Announcements Forum will be sent out as a digest email once per day at 5pm. The email will be from “no-reply@beloit.edu”. When logging into a Moodle course, students will also see a tag on the Announcements Forum if they have unread posts.

Feedback is embedded into all graded Moodle course activities. Feedback may be given to students through many of the tools in Moodle including (but not limited to) assignments, quizzes, and forums.

Quickmail is a third-party plugin that LITS has installed in Moodle to allow more reliable and flexible communication with students within a Moodle course. The Quickmail block is located in the Course Blocks dropdown shade at top right of any Moodle course. Quickmail allows instructors to email students directly from the Moodle course site. Messages are forwarded to students' campus email accounts and can include attachments. Messages may be sent to the entire class, particular students, or to groups if groups are established in the course. Copies of the messages are saved inside the Quickmail block under History. Replies are sent to the instructor's email address and not to Quickmail/Moodle. Please visit the full Quickmail article to learn more about this tool, including documentation on key features.