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Hi, my name is Victoria Shropshire; I teach in the English department here at Elon University
I teach writing and literature courses, and today I'm going to talk
To you about using News and Announcements forums in your Moodle courses
All Moodle courses come loaded with this very top forum,
Which is called
"News forum" when the course is newly-created. I have renamed mine
here "News and Announcements" ENG - section G
And I do this for several reasons. Number one, since we moved from Blackboard
This feature in blackboard was called "Announcements" so I added that word so
That students would know that that is the same function
And then, of course, I put the course
section
So that when a subject line, when this is e-mailed to students,
Goes out it will have their subject line in it and they'll absolutely know that it's from
Me and that it's related to this course
What this forum does is allows an instructor
To push an announcement via email
To every student is enrolled in the class. So essentially, this means that Moodle is
Allowing you to never have to keep a distribution list of your students ever again
So if I click here, and I add a new topic
And the window that comes up looks very much just like any email
Platform would. It has a space for composition, it has a subject line
Whatever you type in the subject line is what gets
Pushed to the subject line of the email addresses
For all the students who are enrolled in the course
So if I type in here that
Class
Is in Belk on Tuesday
That's what they're going to see. And then down here in the message, the actual
Body of the email
I can type all the details that I'd like
And then everyone is subscribed to this forum all the time
Click this little box that says "Mail Now" if I want the email to go out
Instantaneously, and then I post to the forum
When you post to the forum
It will post in the forum and be archived and stored there all the time
And it is not deleted unless you, the instructor, remove it
So even if a student
Deletes their email accidentally, these emails are, or all these announcements
Are stored in that News and Announcements forum
As an ongoing thread. And so you can save every announcement for the entire
Semester
So especially if they are really important announcements, like the
Relocation of a class time, or
Moving of an exam day or time, all of those things can get pushed to their
E-mail, but then they're also
Storied in the forum
In Moodle
All the time