<![CDATA[IST eClass Support]]> <![CDATA[Sending Messages to Students]]>
NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

There are two main methods for communicating with your students through eClass: Announcements and Messages. The Announcements forum is the recommended process and is added by default to the top of each course. 

New in summer 2023: instructors can now also trigger content change notifications in module settings inside eClass to alert students when they make important changes in a course. 

Announcements (recommended) 

Posting in the Announcements Forum is the preferred choice for course communications because:

  • It creates a running list of important communications to students throughout a term;
  • The forum sends email notifications to students for every post;
  • and students cannot reply to posts in the forum.

Announcement forum posts can also be displayed in the Announcements block to draw student's attention to them. Additional details can be found in Posting Course Announcements.

To post in the announcements forum:

1. Enter the Announcements forum or click Add a new topic in the Announcements block.

2. The Announcements forum is usually near the top of your course:




3. You can also open the Block drawer:

4. And use the Announcements block to send an announcement message:

5. Within the announcements forum, click Add discussion topic to post the message ad have it sent to students:

screenshot making announcement forum post

Note: If you do not see the Announcements forum in your course, you may need to re-enable it using the following instructions: Missing the Course Announcements Forum.

 

Messages 

Instructors can also send Messages using a text-like messaging tool in the system. This option is not recommended for regular course communications because the messages reside outside of the course context and are difficult to search for to confirm whether students received them. Messages in this interface reside along with messages from other courses and users and may very well be missed by students. This may be a useful tool for exceptional circumstances like quick updates to specific individuals. 

  1. To message course participants directly, click on the Participants tab at the top of your course page:



  2. Check all the users who you wish to send a message. You may click Select all if you want to message all participants. Then choose Send a message from the ‘With selected users...’ dropdown menu at the bottom.



  3. A message composer window will open where you can type your message. Click the green button to send your message.



  4. A red, numbered alert will appear on the Messages icon for Participants in the course to click on. The messaging drawer now appears along the left-edge of the browser window.




Sending content change notifications

Starting in June 2023, instructors can alert students when they make important content changes in courses. This feature can be used when changes are made in the settings of any activity or resource by checking beside Send content change notification at the bottom of the page:

Screenshot of new content change notifcation checkbox

This will send an email to any student who can access that content item or activity in the courses (if an activity is only available to specific groups, the other groups would not see the alert. This functionality is only available when adding items through the activity chooser where the setting spage is available - uploading files by dragging and dropping does not send alerts.

Notes:

  • There are additional ways to communicate with students outside of using eClass explained in this article: Alternatives to Emailing Students through Course Announcements.
  • Notifications sent in eClass are also sent via email to students at the University unless they have disabled or misconfigured their notification settings.
]]> <![CDATA[Alternatives to Emailing Students through Course Announcements]]>
NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

The recommended process for communicating with the students in your eClass course is to use the Announcements forum, which is automatically created in every eClass course. If you do not see this in your course, please consult the article Missing the Course Announcements Forum.

This forum force-subscribes all students so that they receive email notifications (if unchanged from the defaults). Only instructors and TA's can post topics or reply in this forum so it acts as a record of all important communications in a convenient place for students to check.

To ensure that all students receive any important course messages, the best recommended practice is to also instruct your students to log in to eClass and check the Announcements forum regularly.

If you run into issues using the forum and need an alternative method of contacting your students via email, two other external services are available:

    • Email from Bear Tracks Class Roster
      • Log into Bear Tracks
      • Enter your course
      • Click on the student roster
      • Select all, some, or a single student
      • Select 'Send email' and compose a message to these students


    • Send an email to the Google group for your course
      • Note: For assistance specifically with creating Google course groups, please contact the IST Service desk directly by phone at 780-492-8000 or through the U of A Service Portal available on the Staff Service Centre and the Student Service Centre webpages.
      • Google Course Groups can be used as an alternative to eClass to email all students of a selected course and section(s).
      • They are created by an instructor of a course as required. They are no longer automatically created for all courses.
      • View online instructions for creating course groups which includes additional information on the system and roles.
      • All the students and registered instructors of the selected course and section(s) will be automatically added to the group overnight. Please note that you may not see any additional members in the group until the day after it was created.
      • All course groups are created using the same naming conventions: GRP-TERMCODE-COURSECODE-COURSENUMBER-SECTIONTYPE-SECTIONNUMBER
        • For example: ‘grp-winter20-math101-lec-a1@ualberta.ca’
      • You can now create a single course group for multiple sections. When doing so, you can replace the “SECTIONNUMBER” portion of a group name with a custom suffix
        • For example: ‘grp-winter20-math101-lec-all@ualberta.ca’ or ‘grp-winter20-math101-lec-a1-b1@ualberta.ca’
      • You can email a course group by typing the course group name into the To: address field
        • Tip: typing 'grp-winter20-math101' into the To: field will show all the available Google Course Groups for the Winter 2020 MATH 101 course in the dropdown list below the box and you can select the specific sub-section
      • You can also access the list of all google groups you are enrolled in (which should include groups for any Bear Tracks sections where you are enrolled as an instructor) through the following area within your ualberta gmail or google drive:

    • Messages
      • Additionally, there is a person-to-person messaging system built into eClass - see option 2 under Sending Messages to Students for more information. Please note that this person-to-person messaging system is not usually recommended because it can be difficult to track message history when using it.
    ]]>         <![CDATA[Posting Course Announcements]]>
    NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

    The Announcements forum is the best, and recommended, tool to communicate with your students in eClass. By default, all students will receive email messages forwarded from the Announcements forum every time you post to it. Using this tool also keeps a persistent record of all the announcements you send to your class so that students can check back and view posts if necessary.

    New in June 2023, instructors can also alert students when they make content changes in courses.

    If you do not see the Announcements forum, please see Troubleshooting Announcement forum problems below or check the article: Missing the Course Announcements Forum.



    Posting an Announcement:

    Posting an announcement follows the process exactly as in any eClass discussion forum. You can either click on Add a new topic in the 'Announcements' block in the right-hand block drawer or click on the 'Announcements' link in the top section of your course and then Add a new topic once you are inside your course Announcements forum. You can then enter your message text as you would normally for any eClass forum.

    Click on the Announcements link:



    Or open the block drawer:

    And click on 'Add a new topic...":

    Availability:

    Through the forum settings, you can set dates for the availability of course announcements:

    Troubleshooting Announcement forum problems:

    In general, there are 2 things that can prevent your Announcements forum from sending messages to students:

    1. Changing the forum's subscription settings
      It is possible to change the Subscription mode setting, which can be accessed by going to your forum settings and navigating to the 'Subscription and tracking' category. This setting should always be left unchanged and set to 'Forced subscription'.



    2. The announcements forum is hidden/unavailable to students
      It is possible to post messages to the forum through the Announcements block in the right-hand block drawer. But if the forum is hidden on the main course page, these announcements will not be visible, nor will any messages be sent.
    3. If the course is currently closed (for example, if you're posting an announcement for students in an upcoming course), students will not receive a notification.

     

    Changing the Announcements forum appearance:

    1. If you wish, you can change the name of Announcement forum. Turn on Edit mode at the top right of your course page.
    2. Click the pencil icon beside the forum and enter a new title.
    3. Press 'Enter' to save and confirm your changes. The 'Esc' key can be used to cancel any changes.

    Changing news display in the Announcements block:

    If you would like to change the number of news items that appear in the 'Announcements' block, click the Settings tab at the top of your course page then scroll down to the 'Appearance' category and change the value for ‘Number of announcements’ to the desired value. Be sure to click on Save changes at the bottom of the page.

    number of announcements setting

    Hiding/showing Announcements:

    If you wish to remove the 'Announcements' entirely,

    1. You need to turn on Edit mode at the top right of your course page.
    2. Set the number of ‘Number of announcements’ to zero.
    3. Delete the 'Announcements' forum from the course home page by clicking on the 3dot dropdown beside it
    4. Click on Delete.

    Note: If you try to delete the 'Announcements' without changing the setting ‘Number of announcements’ to zero, it will reappear. You will also need to delete the 'Announcements' block from the right-hand column of blocks to completely remove the 'Announcements'.


    number of announcements zero setting


    Conversely, if you have previously deleted the 'Announcements' from your course, you can only return it by reversing these changes:

    1. In the course Settings, enter a value greater than zero in the number of ‘Number of announcements’
    2. Add the 'Announcements' block: turn on Edit Mode; with the block drawer open, click on Add a block then select Announcements.

    Adding file attachments:

    You can add a file attachment to an announcement by first clicking Add discussion topic and then by clicking on the Advanced link below the message text:

     Image of Advanced link

    Drag and drop a file from your computer into the 'Attachment' area just below the 'Message' text entry box, or click on the file icon and search for a file to upload:

    ]]>         <![CDATA[How to Lock Forum Topics]]>
    NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

    When the lifecycle of a forum topic has reached its natural conclusion or if instructors wish to prevent students from making any more posts in it, forum topics may be locked. This can be triggered manually on specific topics or set to occur after a certain period of inactivity. Note that it is also possible to set a cut-off date for forum posts at the whole forum level (which would be common when a forum was being used as an assessment.) 

    To manually lock a specific discussion topic in a forum:

    • Select Lock this discussion from the 3 dots icon at the far right of the row for the topic on the forum list view:
    • Select Lock this discussion from the 'Settings' link at the top right within the topic itself:

    To set forum discussion topics to automatically close after a certain period of inactivity, access 'Discussion locking' in the forum settings and specify an inactivity duration:


    Please note that: Forums that are locked manually using the first two methods above; can be unlocked. However, Forums locked due to inactivity cannot be re-opened.

    ]]>         <![CDATA[Adding Anonymous Forums]]>
    NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

    As an alternative to the standard Forum activity on eClass, instructors may add an Anonymous Forum if they want students to be able to post in forums without being identified.

    A common use would allow students to post questions about course content without fear or to gather anonymous feedback about a course.

    Anonymous forums operate the same way as standard forums apart from the display of poster identity: users may subscribe to anonymous forums and receive notifications from them but they do not log or track any user information or activity. 

    Note that once you create an anonymous forum, it is not possible to determine who made a specific post (even for eClass site admins).

     

    Adding Anonymous Forums to a course:

    1. Click to activate in the top right of your course page:

      Edit mode


    2. Move to the topic area where you wish to add content (the week, unit, etc.) and click on the Add an activity or resource link.

    3. Click on the Anonymous Forum icon.



    4. A new page will appear with the forum settings.

    5. There is a wide range of settings where you can enter specific customizations for your forum. All that is required is adding the forum name and saving changes:



    6. You can also set the forum type just as in standard forums:



    7. Ratings and grading capabilities are not compatible with anonymous posts as there is no one who can be identified to rate.

    Posting to Anonymous Forums:

    Posting and generally using anonymous forums is very similar to using standard forums.

    1. When posting, Anonymous post is enabled by default. Users can choose to reveal their identities by removing the check below the 'Message' text window.

     

    2. Anonymous posts appear the same way regular posts do but are identified only by 'Anonymous':

     

     3. Additional options in the message interface include whether to be notified on anonymous posts:



    Notes:

    • All other features conform to those of a standard Forum.
    • Ratings and grading capabilities are not compatible with the nature of an anonymous forum. It is a known issue that these settings still appear in the interface. Removing the checkmark in 'Anonymous post' does not affect this. This category option should be ignored completely by users and ratings or grading should not be attempted on anonymous posts.

     

    ]]>         <![CDATA[Preventing Users from Receiving Course Announcements Emails]]>
    NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

    This article outlines how to customize roles in your course to prevent certain users from receiving the email messages normally sent by the Announcements forum or block. The use case would be if you have any administrative users who require access to content in live courses but would have no need to see any messages about current course happenings, deadlines, etc.

    To prevent such users from receiving the course messages, you need to take note of their role in the course as you can only customize notification permissions for specific roles within a course, not for individual users. In the example below we will customize the Non-Editing Instructor role, working with the scenario that we have used that role to enroll a group of users who will be undertaking a review of the course content.

    To block course messages:

    1. From your course main page, click on the Participants tab at the top. Then click on the dropdown menu that says Enrolled Users.



    2. From the dropdown list click on Permissions.



    3. The permissions page initially contains all the permissions for all the roles. To limit this, adjust the dropdown box underneath 'Advanced role override' to whichever role you want to prevent from receiving messages - in our example, we will choose 'Non-Editing Instructor'.



    4. The page will now refresh with all the available capabilities and permissions for only this role, with cleaner options for changing them. As there are a large number of capabilities in the system, you will need to filter the list to get the one you want: 'Allow force subscribe' for the Forum activity. You can then switch the permissions from 'Inherit (Allow)' to 'Prevent'.



    5. Click Save Changes.

    6. Now any users enrolled in your course in the 'Non-editing Instructor' role will not receive messages sent from the Announcements forum. You should no longer see their names in the list of subscribers for the forum.
    ]]>         <![CDATA[Using eClass Messaging]]>
    NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

    The messaging tool in eClass offers features similar to a text-chat or SMS messaging application. It is not the recommended mechanism for instructors to communicate with all students in their class because it is difficult to review the message history, make edits, and users can disable notifications. It can be useful for quick informal 1-to-1 conversations or for students to contact each other.

    For messaging options available for instructors, view Sending Messages to Students. 

    Instructors: It is now also possible to toggle messaging on eClass course groups so that students would have an in-system method of collaborating and communicating on group work.

    The messaging tool allows:

    • Sending and managing messages
    • Managing your contacts
    • Managing your messaging tool settings


    Accessing Messages

    The messaging menu can be accessed through the chat bubble icon in the top horizontal navigation bar. The messaging interface is a drawer that slides out from the left edge of the browser window.

    messaging icon

    When you look at the top navigation bar on any screen, you may sometimes find the icon with a number on it. The number denotes how many incoming unread messages you have.

     Below is the main page of the messaging tool. All past conversations can found on this page and will be grouped by 'Starred', 'Group', or 'Private'.

     main page in messaging on eclass

     

    Sending and Managing Messages

    To send a new message to a user you will need to search for them in the eClass system. Use the Search bar at the top and type in the full name of the user.

    searching for someone in messaging

    Once the search is complete, select the user. A new messaging box will appear with various options (e.g., adding the user to your contacts or writing them a new message).

    options for messaging a user

     

    Managing Contacts

    To view your contacts list, select Contacts on the main page of the messaging tool.

    contacts icon in messaging

     

    Managing Settings

    Clicking the gear icon on the right-hand side displays privacy settings, notification preferences, and the option to press enter to send messages instead of using the arrowhead Send icon.

    settings gear in messaging

    settings page in messaging

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