Course Mailing Lists

Service Description

CIS provides several different methods for emailing the instructors and students in a particular course.

  • Google Groups
  • The HMC portal also includes a way for a faculty member to email all of the students in his/her class.
  • Sakai has an Email Archive tool which creates a mailing list.

Availability

Available to faculty and emeritus at HMC.

How to Access the Service

You can see all of the course mailing lists that you are a member of by going to Google Groups and clicking the My Groups link. Google Groups has a web interface to your course mailing lists which makes it easy to add and remove members and view archived messages. Any email client may be used to send mail to a Google Group.  If you are a faculty member teaching a course, then you are the owner of the course list and can make changes to the default settings. The default settings for a course mailing list are:

  • Only members of the group can see the list of members.
  • The web archive of messages sent to the group is turned off.
  • Prospective members must ask the owner of the list to be able to join.

We also have a list of all automatically generated course mailing lists on Google Groups (HMC login is required).

The HMC portal allows you to view all of your students (with photos) and email the class. The portal functions more as a one way faculty to student broadcast system, in that the students cannot mail to the class list via the portal.

The Sakai Email Archive tool allows you to email students and keeps a convenient searchable and sortable archive of the messages on the Sakai site. You can set up an address of your choice for the list, and configure the tool to allow email from any address or keep it closed. You do not have to be in Sakai to send messages, but can use the email client of your choice. Although the Email Archive tool is not part of the default set up for a course site, it is very easy to add, and can easily be configured to suit your needs. Anyone you have included in the site (eg. as an auditor) will be included in the recipient list. Even if you don’t use Sakai for anything else, it is worth considering the Email Archive tool for communicating with your class.

Login Pages

Related Services

Related Links