Messages, Announcements and Email
Instructors can foster student-to-student and instructor-to-student interaction in a course using Blackboard, by leveraging the Messages, Announcements, and or Email tool. The main differences are as follows:
- Messages: Course messages are private and secure text-based communication that occurs within your course among course members. Messages are accessed from a course site, or from the main homepage in Blackboard. A record of messages are kept within these areas, and notifications are sent via email or mobile device.
- Announcements: Course announcements are used to post time-sensitive inforamtion. When you add an announcement, you can also send it as an email to students in your course. Students receive the announcement even if they don't log into your course.
- Email: The email tool allows you to send email to other people in your course without launching a separate email program. The email tool does not keep a record of emails sent out.
Using Messages in your Course
Considerations
Recommended practices to efficiently communicate with your students in Blackboard include:
- Provide a greeting
- Keep your message clear and concise
- Use complete sentences
- Include a descriptive subject line
- Only use capital letters as necessary as ALL CAPS can be seen as raising one’s voice online
