Email and Announcements (or Messages)

Here are some tips for making your communications for your course most effective and efficient:

Announcements vs. Email

You can add an announcement which is immediately sent out via email. The announcement can stay on your course home page so that any student who may have missed the email will still see the message or be reminded. We recommend this method for important information, as opposed to only using the Email tool. 

Click "Create Announcement" from the Announcements tool, and check the box that says:

Note: Emails sent from Blackboard do not contain a link to your course, or much of any information about who you are. They are sent from "Blackboard-Sender@umaryland.edu"  - therefore, 

we highly recommend you do the following:

1. Include a greeting and salutation, especially including your name

2. Include a URL/link/address to your course or anything specific in your course that you mention in the email. Links can be hyperlinked using the HTML editor tools, or you can simply paste in the URL from your browser's address bar. It is far easier for a student or other recipient to click on a link to go directly to the course, or a discussion forum, or to whatever in the course you'd like them to look at. Want students to participate in a discussion forum or survey? Send them the URL directly to that forum or survey. Want to draw their attention to a particular reading or content item? Hyperlink to it so that students can click on it and go directly to the item when they view the email. Normally you are already sending this message from within Blackboard, so just copy the URL to the item in your course before you go to post the announcement/send the email, and then paste it in. This will make it so that students can read the email and just click right to your course.

Here is a quick video showing you how the entire process works: