How to email your students in Blackboard

Blackboard Tips and FAQ for OISE Instructors

How can I contact / email my students?

As an instructor of a course, you have a few different ways to contact/email your students.

1. Send a message to all students

If you use the Announcement tool, you can check off the box "Send Email to all users even those that choose not to receive Announcement notifications through email." when composing an Announcement. The Announcement tool does not allow for file attachments.

2. Send an email message with a file attachment

If you wish to send an email with a file attachment, choose "Course Tools" in the control panel, and select "Send Email". "All Users" will send to the entire class, whereas ""Single / Select Users" will give you a class list to choose from for individual messages.

3. Lookup the email address of a student.

If you want to send a regular email message using your current standard email client (Outlook, Entourage, etc.), you can look up the email address of a particular student in your class. In the Control Panel, choose Course Tools -> UT Manage Groups. Click the View/Download Selected Roster link. Check off the box beside Email. The Preview button will display the results on screen, whereas the Download button will save the information in an Excel spreadsheet file.

How can I make an Outlook mailing list of my class?

Please note, this method will NOT automatically keep an accurate, up-to-date record of student enrolment. Using Blackboard is recommended, as it will always be updated with changes to enrolments (add/drop) student email addresses.

If you are teaching a course where the enrolments won't change, or you are comfortable manually updating email addresses if required for your personal Outlook mailing list, then you can follow these directions.

General info/help on how to create a “distribution list” in Outlook:
http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/ec/Services/Self_Help/Email_Lists/

Once you are familiar with how to create a distribution list, you can make one with all of your student’s email addresses. Basically you log into your Blackboard course to retrieve your student’s email addresses (1.), open in Excel and copy (2.) and then paste them into an Outlook distribution list (3.) as shown below:

How can my students email each other?

Allow students to email other students in the class

You can make a link in your course menu so you and your students can quickly send email messages to other students in the class. In the course menu (blue + sign), select Create Course Link. Name it “Send Email”. Click Browse. Click the plus (+) sign beside Tools, click the plus (+) sign beside Send Email, click on Select Users. Check off ”Available to Users” and click Submit.