Use Moodle to Communicate with Your Students

Moodle provides many options for instructors to communicate with their students electronically. There are two main options for emailing students from your Moodle course.

Use Announcements to email an entire class

By default, every course has an Announcements forum and all students are subscribed to this forum. Moodle uses the word 'subscription' to mean that a forum sends email in addition to making posts available within the particular forum. When you create a Moodle announcement, the message will be emailed to the class AND posted within the Moodle course.

To post an announcement that is also emailed to students:

  1. Either click the Announcements forum link in your main course content area
    Illustration of announcement link in main section of Moodle course
    or the Add a new topic link in your Latest news block .
    illustration of "add a new topic" link in the Latest News block
  2. You should now see a window where you can enter your announcement (and email) information. If you do not, click on the button to Add discussion topic.
  3. Write your message and click the Post to forum button. Your message will be emailed to students 30 minutes after you click this button, giving you time to edit the message before it goes out.
    illustration of screen where you can write your announcement.

Use Quickmail to email the whole class or subgroups

The Quickmail block allows instructors to email students from their Moodle course site. Messages can include attachments and can also be distributed to Moodle groups. Students in your class can also use Quickmail to contact you or other students.

NOTE: Quickmail has a unique logic for the traditional "to:" line. It gives options for both including and excluding recipients. You need to include recipients on the "to:" line, as usual. Excluding recipients is optional.

  1. In the Quickmail block, click the Compose Course Message
    ilustration of quickmail block and "compose course message" link
  2. Next select the people to whom you are sending, as you would with any "to:" line. You can select "All in Course" or all "Registered students (role)" or as many individual participants or groups as you want.

     
  3. OPTIONAL: You can exclude individuals or groups from the to: list you selected in the step above. In the example illustrated below, I am sending the message to All in class, except Baked Potato.
    illustration of the Exclude line in Quickmail. In this example, the message will go to all in course—except Baked Potato
  4. Enter a Subject line and Body, as with other emails.
  5. Attach files, create a signature, or specify a specific time to send your message. Once the message is ready, click the Send Email — or select schedule a time to send the message.
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