One way that Sakai can be helpful is by providing faculty with a way to communicate with members of their course. There are three tools that facilitate communication: Announcements, Email Archive, and Messages. Each tool has slightly different features and faculty should choose the tool they are most comfortable using. If faculty plan on using more than one of these tools within a course, they should provide students with information on the type of communication they should expect to receive from each tool. If you want to talk through the pros and cons of these tools, please email Samantha Martin to set up a consultation at [email protected].

What is the Announcements Tool?

• This tool can be used to communicate with the entire class or with specific groups or sections in the class. This tool cannot be used to communicate with individual students.
• This tool is one of the default tools added to every Sakai course site when it's created.
• Announcements can be made available right away or scheduled to be sent at a specific time and also to disappear at a specific time.
• By default, Announcements only appear within Sakai in the specific course site and on a users Home page. You can check a box to send the Announcement out to participant's email address.
• When student receives Announcements in their email, they come from a "no-reply" email address that displays the Department, course number, and section number for your course.
  • Ex: FYS 199 10 F23 <[email protected]>
• A record of every Announcement posted in the course appears within the tool, although some may no longer be visible to student users depending on the display parameters set by the faculty member. 
• By default, only Faculty or Staff user roles can send communication out through the Announcement tool but you can adjust the permissions of the tool to allow students to communicate via this tool if you want to. 

What is the Email Archive Tool?

• This tool is used to communicate with the entire class. This tool cannot be used to communicate with specific groups or sections or individual students. 
• This tool is not automatically added to every course site that is created. If you wish to use this tool you will need to add it to your site, which you can learn how to do by reading this article: https://sakai.screenstepslive.com/s/sakai_help/m/114554/l/1629494-how-do-i-add-tools-to-my-site
  • When you add this tool you'll be prompted to create an alias email for your site. You can add any descriptive text you'd like to appear before the @ sign.
• To use this tool, you'll copy the alias email address for the site and paste it into the "To" field of your email program. Enter your content and send as you would any email through your email program. 
  • ​​​​​​​Using the capability of your email platform you can send these messages immediate or schedule the to be sent at a specific time.
• When class participants receive messages sent through this tool they will appear to have come from the Faculty member's name but with the alias email address and not the faculty members' email address. 
• Copies of all emails sent to the alias email will be saved in the Email Archive tool on your course site. 
• Anyone with access to the alias email can send messages to all course participants. 

What is the Messages Tool?

• This tool allows you to communicate with all participants in a course, specific groups or sections, as well as with individual members of the site. 
• This tool is one of the tools that are added to every course site upon site creation.
• Messages sent using this tool can be sent immediately or scheduled to be sent at a specific time. 
• This tool functions like email except that messages never leave the course site, unless you specify that you want a copy of the message sent to the recipients email address by proactively checking a box for that option. 
  • If an email copy of the message is sent it will appear in the recipient's inbox with the sender's email address. 
• All messages sent by this tool are saved unless the user deletes them. 
• All course participants can use this tool to communicate with each other by default.