Email Archive is like a listserv - a tool that allows you and your students to send a message to the whole class. But, in addition to being sent to everyone's email address, it gets archived in the site.

NOTE: If you do not have a need to allow your students to send an email to the entire class, you do NOT need to enable email archive. The Announcements tool offers the same functionality, except that it allows the instructor to be the only one who posts messages/announcements to the class. Just like Email Archive, the Announcements tool can send out an email as well as post the announcement in the course site and show it for students in the Home Page of a site.

 

Each site has an automatically generated site email address. Email sent to the site address is also sent to all site participants' email addresses. In addition, these messages are saved in Email Archive. Below are some important features to keep in mind:

Email Archive as a Student

Students can see a list of all email messages that have been sent to the site account:

  1. Enter Email Archive by clicking on Email Archive in the left menu bar.
  2. At the top of the screen, a Search button allows you to search the messages. Click on the Manual Refresh button periodically to see if there are any new messages.
  3. For security reasons, each person is only allowed to send email from the one email address -- the one they used to register for the course. It is listed at the top of the email archive page. Be sure to use this account to send mail to Email Archive, or it won't go through.
  4. If someone needs to change the original email address, they can do so in their MyWorkspace Account area.
  5. The address for the class Email Archive is listed near the top of the page. Notice there are two addresses. They are actually the same, but one is in English and easy-to-recognize (it's an alias), while the other is in cryptic number coding (the real address). You may use either. Simply copy the account address and paste it into the To: field in your outgoing email message. It's a good idea to save that address so you don't have to copy it again.
  6. When a message is sent to the Email Archive account, it will appear in a list on the Email Archive page. Depending on the preferences set by each participant, the message may also go to each participant's email program, or it may be saved for a daily digest, or it may not appear at all in the participant's email program.
  7. If someone REPLIES to a message; it is sent to EVERYONE on the list... This is important because replies are PUBLIC, not private, and a copy is also stored in the Course Archive...
  8. Participants can view archived email by clicking on the Subject Title of the message in the list.
  9. Everyone (not just you...) has permission to send email using this tool. There is the potential for a student to repeatedly "SPAM" the entire class with email messages using this tool...Replies to the messages will amplify the email traffic and things can really snowball... Conclusion: It is important that you understand and explain these things to your students if you are going to use the Email Archive.

Setting up Email Archive

Instructors set up email archive when they choose this tool in Site Info. (See the module on Site Info for more information about choosing tools.)

  1. To set up the site mailbox click on the Site Info link in the left menu bar. Click on the Edit Tools link at the top of the window. In the list of tools, make sure there is a check in the box next to Email Archive and click Continue.
  2. In the next window, the Site email address box, type in a name for your mailbox (see image above). Remember this is an email address, so make it short, lower case, no spaces and easy-to-remember.
  3. Scroll down if necessary to click on Continue. In the final dialog box, finish out Site Info.
  4. You may have to refresh your browser to see Email Archive on the left menu bar.
  5. Click on the Email Archive link in left menu bar. Once again, it works the same for instructors as for students (see previous section), only with more options.
  6. Click on the Options button to set how many messages will display on a page, who messages will be accepted from (anyone or members only), and to change the alias set in Site Info.
  7. Please don't change any Permissions

Naming Email Archive Site Issues

Each class needs to have a unique email address. However, there might be several Eng1A classes (for example) each quarter with an ETUDES-NG shell. Each of these classes will have to have unique addresses. Here are some tips about that:

  1. The nickname should make it easy for students to recognize which class it is, teacher, and term. It makes it long, but it is the only thing I can think of. So a combo of eng1a_sinouf05@ may do it.
  2. If you want to always use the same consistent alias for a specific course, say cis100-obrien, when a term ends and another begins.... you can remove the alias of the course that ended by going to the email archive in the site, clicking options, and deleting the alias field and leaving it blank. Then the alias is no longer used for the finished class so it can be used in the new term's site.

    3/1/06