Students often ask to be notified of events in their course sites, such as upcoming assignment or assessment due dates and whether items have been graded.
Many tools include options to notify site participants of various activities and help them keep track of their completed or graded work. This article discusses many popular Sakai tools that include these options.
Automatically displaying scheduled messages and important dates
Automate messages in Announcements.
- When you create or edit an announcement, specify custom dates when it will be available. Schedule an announcement to be posted at a specific date and time using Specify Dates > Beginning in the Availability area.
- Enable email notifications to send the announcement to site participants via email. If the announcement also has a Beginning date set, the email notification will be sent at the specified date and time. In the Email Notification area, select High - All participants or Low - Not received by those who have opted out.
Add important dates to the Calendar.
Add the Calendar tool to your site to display important events from other tools, such as assignment and assessment due dates, or to manually add items to the calendar. Select a Calendar item to view details about that item.
Helping students to keep track of upcoming and completed work
Automatically add assignment due dates to the Calendar and Announcements.
Assignments works together with the Calendar and Announcements tools if those tools are activated in your site.
- When you create or edit an assignment, automatically add the assignment due date to the Calendar tool. In the Availability area, check the checkbox Add due date to calendar.
- Add an announcement about the open date to Announcements. In the Availability area, check the checkbox Add an announcement about the open date to Announcements. You may also, optionally, use the dropdown menu to elect to send a copy of the announcement to students via email.
Track tasks in Lessons.
Use Lessons to structure the course activities and to make it easier for site participants to access the content they need and to engage with learning materials.
In Lessons, add a checklist for each week, unit, or topic to help site participants keep track of the activities they've completed and to manage their time.
Automatically add test dates to the Calendar and Announcements.
- When you publish an assessment with Tests & Quizzes, send an automatic email notification to site participants to let them know when the assessment will be available. Select the notification dropdown menu and choose send notification below to students.
- Check the checkbox Display due date on Calendar. By default, if the Calendar tool is included in your site, the assessment's due date will be displayed on the calendar.
Note: The email notification is sent immediately when publishing the assessment, but students will not be able to access the assessment via the link in the email until the assessment's open date.
Notifying students when new materials are added to your site
Send notifications when you add content to Drop Box.
In Drop Box, configure tool options to enable email notifications when files are uploaded. Allowing email notifications will give you the option to send notifications to students when you upload files to their folders. It will also give students the option to notify you when they upload files. You can choose to always send email notifications to ensure that email notifications are sent for each upload.
Send notifications when you add content to Resources.
When you upload files in Resources, send an automatic email notification to site participants to let them know that new content is available. In the Email notification for this update dropdown menu, choose High - All participants or Low - Not received by those who have opted out before completing the upload.