How to send students on your module an email

This refers to Moodle 3.4 from July 2018 onward

How to send the students on your module an email

Moodle gives you the ability to send an email message to all the students who are enrolled on your module. The email message will be sent to the email address in the student's profile which has been fixed to the student's University of Nottingham student email address.

To contact all students in the module using Announcements or (same thing) the Latest Announcements block

The best way to send a message to all your students (all students in a module) is to create an Announcement - EITHER by:

• clicking on the  forum at the top of the module OR
• clicking Add a new topic in the Latest Announcements block

The Latest Announcements block is available in every module: If it is not visible, to make it visible:

• Click on the Turn editing on button,
• Click the Hamburger menu (Nav drawer)
• Scroll down to and select Add A Block
• Select Latest Announcements from the drop-down menu

A post in Announcements

• It puts a post in the Announcements (forum) which will remain for ever unless deleted (always there for students to refer to)
• It adds a notification in the Latest announcements block (this will show only the most recent posts)
• It will go out by email to all participants (including staff enrolled on the module) and they cannot unsubscribe 

To send a message to all participants

NOTE: To send a message it is necessary that the  forum is visible to students 

1. Go into your module
2. Click on "Announcements" (or go to the Latest Announcements block)
3. Click on the Add a new topic button (or hyperlink if in the Latest Announcements block)
4. Type a Subject and type your Message
5. Add an attachment if you wish
6. Click on the Post to forum button

The message:

• Appears as a post in the forum
• Is featured in the Latest Announcements block on the right
• Is sent as an email to all students and other participants

You can choose to "Send forum post notifications with no editing-time delay" or - if left unticked, Moodle will give you 30 minutes in which you can edit the text (useful for bad typists!).

The time of receipt still depends on the user's profile settings for one at a time or digest.

Information about the email

The email is sent FROM the Moodle system – and it will have the module code in the Subject. 

It is not sent from your personal email address (so you will not see a copy in your Sent items). You (or your students) can re-read the message at any time by visiting the News Forum.

However it does have your personal email in the REPLY TO field which means that students can respond by email directly to you. It is up to you whether you enter into a private correspondence or post the answers back in the module for all to see.

NOTE: You can manage the emails you get from Moodle

This is the best option if:

• You want to be sure everyone gets the message
• The message contains information that students will need to save or read again “Change of seminar room to C30, Physics Building”
• You want the message to be easily found if people need to come back to it

NOTE: If the message needs action within 24 hours, students set to digest may not receive it in time. This method should not be used for urgent or emergency announcements (use mail through SATURN for those).

How the student receives the email depends on their settings. They may receive each individual announcement email separately, or, it if this is set in their profile (and it is default for students), all announcements and forum alerts are bundled up in one email Digest per day.  Remind students to check all emails with the subject heading “moodle.Nottingham Forum Digest”. These emails arrive at the end of the day (around 5 pm) so students may not receive an email until up to 24 hours after you post it.

Option 2: Use the participants list 

The best way to send a message to students is to email them via the Announcements. However, you can also send a message to individual students or a group or small proportion of students on a module (say up to 15 or so students).

You can use the Participants list to send a Moodle message. 

To open the Participants List:

• Open the hamburger menu (nav drawer)
• Select Participants

To send a message:

• In the Participants list, select the tickbox next to one or more students and at the bottom of the page choose from the dropdown menu “Send a message”.

This is more like a TEXT MESSAGE.

This process sends a message to each student. They receive it in one of the following ways:

1. If they are ONLINE it pops up as a message and goes into their Messages folder.

2. If they are OFFLINE  then it goes into their messages folder and is sent as an email.

3. It is possible for individuals to change their preferences on how to receive messages so these defaults (1 and 2 above) may have changed. Some individuals may opt not to see any messages at all so you can’t be sure your message got to them!

Note: There is NO subject or module context on the message – is it  sent from one person (e.g., a module convenor) to another (student) so you should include the name of the module in the message to give it a context.

This is the best option if:

• You want to send a quick personal message
• The message is informal, quickly read and does not need to be kept
• You don’t need the message to be easily found, as people are unlikely to need to read it again

To send a message to certain participants:

• Navigate to the module (that the students are enrolled on) that you want to email. Under the Navigation area select participants. 
  
  
• A new screen will load listing the first 20 students on this module. If you want to email all of the students on this module then you will need to bring up all of the students on the one screen.
  
  
• You can do this by clicking the hyperlink at the bottom saying Show all xxx – in this case xxx = 311. 
  
  
• Once you have the new longer screen loaded you can then click on the Select all button, and then choose "send a message" from the drop down list (see below).

Composing the email

• A new screen will load into which you can compose your email (shown below). You are able to see the email address that Moodle will send this message to.

Please note that the email will appear to come from your University of Nottingham email address. Therefore if a student replies to your email then it will go directly into your University email account.