ARCHIVED: In Oncourse, what is Course Mail?

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UITS no longer supports original Oncourse. For information about Indiana University's current version of Oncourse, see ARCHIVED: What is Oncourse?

The following is an overview of Oncourse Course Mail.

What it does

As an instructor, you can choose to activate Course Mail for sending internal messages to class members. When Course Mail is active, you and your students can use it to send messages to the entire class, to groups defined in your class roster, or to individual participants.

Course Mail is internal to your course only. Users can't forward or send messages to email accounts outside of your course, but you can arrange for Oncourse to send you an email message if you have new Course Mail waiting. Instructors are responsible for determining whether and how Course Mail will be used in their classes.

Key concepts

Activation: Course Mail is turned off by default. Instructors who want to use Course Mail must activate it deliberately.

Notification: By adjusting the preferences, Course Mail users can arrange for Oncourse to automatically send a daily email message alerting them to unread messages. Via Course Mail options, instructors can arrange for Oncourse to notify authors if their sent messages are still unread.

Folders: Course Mail is organized into folders. Initially, these include Inbox, Sent, and Deleted Items. You can add more folders if you need them.

Attachments: Course Mail includes a File Upload Wizard that allows you to add file attachments to your messages.

Things to consider

Instructors are responsible for specifying any policies about the appropriate use of Course Mail in their classes.
If you would like to grade Course Mail messages and record those grades automatically in the gradebook, you'll have to set up gradebook assignments for them ahead of time.
Oncourse will disconnect you if your session remains inactive for too long. While you are entering text, Oncourse does not consider your session to be active. If you plan to compose a long Course Mail message, consider entering and saving it in a word processor or text editor, and then copying and pasting the text into Course Mail.
Deleted messages remain in the Deleted Items folder until you purge them.