Emails to students

[dkear]

How do I send emails to students?

[rmurchshafer · Accepted solution]

Greetings Dennis,

There are a couple of methods I'm going to put below, but the first you thing you need to know is that none of these will work if your course is not published first.  How do I publish a course? 

• My preferred method to get a message to the entire class is to post an Announcement How do I add an announcement in a course? The reason I like it best is that a notification with the text from the Announcement will go out to students, AND the message stays in the course.  If a student is looking for that information later I think it's easier to find if it's in the course along with the rest of your course materials.
• The 2nd method would be using the InBox How do I send a message to all course users in the Inbox as an instructor? This works more like traditional email and students will received a notification about the message like with an Announcement.  You are more limited in that it only takes straight text (no formatting or images allowed) and for students to come back to the message later they either find it in their own email or in the InBox in Canvas.  

Either method is good and there are valid arguments as to which one is preferred.  I tend to use Announcements if it's for the entire class, and the InBox if it's just for a single or group of students.

Rick