Send an email in myCourses
- Jacqueline Kort Mascort (Deactivated)
The Email tool in myCourses serves as an extension of your official McGill email account (first.last@mcgill.ca for instructors or first.last@mail.mcgill.ca for students). As such, all email sent through myCourses will appear as though it was sent from your McGill address and will be delivered to students' McGill inboxes. There is no separate email account for myCourses. You can create sorting rules to help organize email coming into your inbox from myCourses.
Instead of sending email, it is recommended to post announcements in your courses, since students will see these messages on your course home page every time they log in. Students can also set up notifications in order to receive an email or text message whenever you post a new announcement. In order to protect student privacy, the Classlist and Address Book are not visible to students. Students will need to know the email addresses of their classmates in order to contact them. Any recipients included in an email will be BCC'd by default when the email is sent via the Classlist.
In this article:
Send email from the Classlist page
The quickest way to contact your students is to send an email from the Classlist. Students will be BCCed by default.
On your course home page, select Classlist on the Navigation Bar.
Select Email Classlist at the top of the page.
(Optional) Select a tab (e.g. Students) at the top of the page to email your students.
Select Send Email.
In the Compose New Message pop-up window that appears:
The BCC field is populated with the email addresses of your entire class. You can also enter any additional external emails separated by a semi-colon.
To complete the Subject line:
Leave the pre-filled course name intact, including the final colon (:).
Add your subject text after the course name, as in the following example:
[Fall 2012 Biol-900-005]: Reminder - assignment due Thursday, the 2nd
Enter a text message only. Embedded videos and advanced formatting options from myCourses will not appear in the received message.
(Optional) Select Browse… to locate a file from your computer and attach it to the message. The maximum file size is 14MB.
Select Send.
The Send Results confirmation page lists the message recipients. Click Close.
Email selected students:
Select Classlist.
Select the checkbox beside each student you wish to email.
Select Email at the top of the list.
Follow the steps above for composing and sending a new message.
Email a single student:
On the main Classlist page, select the name of the student you wish to email.
Follow the steps above for composing a new message.
Send email to groups
If you have set up groups in your course and you would like send an email to one or more groups, the quickest way to do this is from the Groups tool.
On the main Groups page, select a Group Category from the top drop-down list.
Select the checkbox beside each group you want to email.
Locating the Groups tool in Course AdminSelecting Groups you want to emailSelect Email at the top of the list to display the Compose New Message pop-up window with the email addresses for all members of the selected group(s) in the To field.
Follow the same steps for composing a new message in the Classlist section above.
Send email using the Email tool
On the Course Home page, select the envelope icon
on the top toolbar and select Email.
Start typing the recipients' name or click on To, Cc, or Bcc to access the Address Book.
You can also click on the Address Book button at the top-right corner of the page to open a pop-window with a list of users of the current course.In the Filter by drop-down list, you can seleect select one of the following:
All Course Contacts: Shows students in your courses.
All Personal Contacts: Shows students added to your Personal Contacts (see instructions below).
Course or Group Name: Shows students from the selected course, or selected group within a course.
Section Name: Shows students from the selected section of a cross-listed course.
Select the checkbox beside the name of each student you want to email.
When finished, select Add Recipients at the bottom right to close the current window and return to the Compose window.
Follow the same steps for composing a new message in the Classlist section above.
Select Send.
View sent email
By default, copies of sent email from myCourses go to the Sent Mail page.
On the Course Home page, select the envelope icon
on the top toolbar and select Email.
In the Compose New Message window, select Sent Mail. A list of sent email is displayed.
Select the subject of an email to view it.
Email settings
On the Email Settings page, you can create an email signature that will automatically appear in the Message field of every new email you compose in myCourses.
Select your name at the top-right of a myCourses window and then select Account Settings.
Make sure the Send a copy of each outgoing message… checkbox is selected. It is recommended to keep this default to maintain an additional record of the emails you send from myCourses.
In the Email Signature textbox, enter a signature that will automatically appear at the bottom of any new messages composed in myCourses.
Make sure the Show external email addresses… checkbox is selected. If it is deselected, you will not be able to view any students in the Address Book because all email addresses in myCourses are considered "external".
Select Save.
Create inbox rules for sorting myCourses email
If you receive a significant amount of email, it is strongly recommended to set up your McGill Exchange Inbox to automatically sort myCourses email into sub-folders for each course.
Faculty and staff are not allowed to systematically forward or sync McGill email accounts to an external (non McGill) email server.