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Communicating in bCourses: FAQs

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2.0 - Updated on 2022-04-07 by Miles Lincoln

1.0 - Authored on 2015-11-19 by Seyon Wind

Can I send a message to everyone in my course site using my own email application?

Yes! You can request a Mailing List for a course. We will provide you with an address that you can put into the recipient "To" field of any email application. It will send your message to everyone who is enrolled in your course site.

For more information, please see this bCourses help article: bCourses Mailing List

Why didn’t my students receive the message that I posted?

Any message that instructors send through bCourses, whether you are using the Inbox or the Announcement tool, will show up in immediately in these tools, as well as in CalCentral.

In addition, Notifications are sent directly to students’ email accounts. Notifications are copies of Announcements or Inbox messages, notifying them that there is a message waiting for them in the Announcements or Inbox tool within bCourses.

If students report that they are not receiving these notifications, there are a couple of possibilities:

  1. Is the course site published? If not, students will not receive the messages. Please make sure your course site is published before posting Announcements and sending messages via the Inbox.
  2. The notification may have gone into the Spam folder of their email inbox, so they may need to check there.
  3. They may have changed their default notification setting, which, by default is ‘Notify Immediately’ for Announcement postings and Inbox messages.

For instructions on how to set up notifications, please see this Canvas Guide: How do I set my Notification Preferences?

Why didn’t I receive a copy of my Announcement or Inbox message right away?

It may be that your Notification Preferences for "Announcement Created By You" or "Conversation Created By Me" are not enabled and set to the ‘Notify Immediately’ setting.

To check, click on ‘Settings’ at the top right of the screen (next to the 'Logout' link), and then ‘Notifications’ on the left-hand navigation menu. You will be taken to a screen that has your Notification preferences.

Another possibility is that your course site is unpublished. Announcement notifications do not get sent when you post an announcement in an unpublished site.

What are the default notification settings?

By default, students receive notifications for Announcement and Inbox messages ASAP.

For a full list of default notification settings and what they mean, please see this bCourses help article: Default Notification Settings

Can I add more than one attachment to an Announcement?

Only one attachment can be added to an announcement. However, you can create a link to a file in the body of your Announcement. This means that a file is uploaded to your course site and placed in the Files area, and a link is created to it in the Announcement.

Please see this Canvas Guide for step-by-step instructions on adding content into your Announcement: How do I add content to my Announcement?